
Class._""\"T^ 30\ 
Book l2v1\_ 



Gopfyrightls' 



JO 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



WORKS OF ELLEN H. RICHARDS 

PUBLISHED BY 

JOHN WILEY & SONS 

43-45 EAST I9TH ST., NEW YORK 

The Cost of Living as Modified by Sanitary Science. 

By Ellen H. Richards, Instructor in Sanitary 
Chemistry in the Massachusetts. Institute of Tech- 
nology. Third Edition, Revised. lamo. 164 
pages. Cloth. $1.00. 

Air, Water, and Food; From a Sanitary Standpoint. 

By Ellen H. Richards, with the assistance of 
Alpheus G. Woodman, Instructors in Sanitary 
Chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology. Second Edition, Revised. 8vo. 270 
pages. Cloth. $2.00. 

The Cost of Food : A Study in Dietaries. 

By Ellen H. Richards, Instructor in Sanitary 
Chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology. i2mo. 161 pages. Cloth. $1.00. 

The Dietary Computer. 

By Ellen H. Richards, Instructor in Sanitary Chem- 
istry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as- 
sisted by Louise Harding Williams. $1.50 net. 
Pamphlet separately, $1.00 net. 

The Cost of Shelter. 

By Ellen H. Richards. i2mo. vi + 136 pages. Il- 
lustrated. Cloth. $1.00. 



PUBLISHED BY 

WHITCOMB & BARROWS 

HUNTINGTON CHAMBERS 

The Chemistry of Cooking and Cleaning. 

By Ellen H. Richards and S Maria Elliott. Cloth. 
158 pages. Price $1.00. 
Food Materials and their Adulterations. 

By Ellen H. Richards. Cloth. 183 pages. Price 

$1.00. 

Home Sanitation. 

Revised Edition. Edited by Ellen H. Richards 
and Marion Talbot. Paper. 85 pages. Price 25c. 

Plain Words about Food. 

Edited by Ellen H. Richards. The Rumford Leaf- 
lets. Illustrated. Cloth. 176 pages. Price $1.00. 

First Lessons on Food Diet. 

By Ellen H. Richards. Cloth. 52 pages. 30c.net. 

The Art of Right living. 

By Ellen H. Richards. Cloth. 50 pages. 50c.net. 



THE 

COST OF SHELTER. 



BY 

ELLEN H. RICHARDS, 

Instructor in Sanitary Chetnistry^ 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 



FIRST EDITION. 
FIRST THOUSAND. 



NEW YORK: 

JOHN WILEY & SONS. 

London: CHAPMAN & HALL, Limited. 

1905. 



^^\ 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
TwoCoiMes Received 

NOV 24 1905 

^ Copyrtffht Entry 
CLASS Ct XXc. No. 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1905, 

BY 

ELLEN H. RICHARDS. 



ROBERT DRUMMOND, PRINTER, NEW YORK. 



THE HOUSEHOLD EXISTS FOR ONE OR 
MORE OF THE FOLLOWING REASONS: 

Two or more persons form an alliance 

(^) for protection against the outside world; 

{b) for protection against the outside world and 
for the rearing of children; 

(c) for the greater gain in convenience which the 
common life can give over that of single effort; 

{d) for companionship; 

{e) for the greater independence it gives to the 
group; 

(/) for the greater ease in satisfying one's preju- 
dices or whims. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER L 

PAGB 

The House and what it Signifies in Family Life. Typi- 
fied IN Pioneer and Colonial Homes, the Centres 
OF Industry and Hospitality i 



CHAPTER n. 
The House Considered as a Measure of Social Standing 15 

CHAPTER III. 

Legacies from the Nineteenth Century, III Adapted to 
Changed Conditions, Cause Physical Deterioration 
AND Domestic Friction 31 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Place of the House in the Social Economy of the 
Twentieth Century 48 

CHAPTER V. 

Possibilities in Sight Provided the Housewife is Pro- 
gressive 63 

V 



VI TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PAGE 

Cost per Person and per Family for Various Grades or 

Shelter 8i 



CHAPTER VII. 

Relation between Cost of Shelter and Total Income 
TO BE Expended 97 

CHAPTER VIII. 
To Rent or to Own: a Difficult Question 108 



THE COST OF SHELTER. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE HOUSE AND WHAT IT SIGNIFIES IN FAMILY 
LIFE; TYPIFIED IN PIONEER AND COLONIAL 
HOMES, THE CENTERS OF INDUSTRY AND HOS- 
PITALITY. 

"There is no noble life without a noble aim." — Charles Dole. 

The word Home to the Anglo-Saxon race calls to mind 
some definite house as the family abiding-place. Around 
it cluster the memories of childhood, the aspirations of 
youth, the sorrows of middle life. 

The most potent spell the nineteenth century cast on 
its youth was the yearning for a home of their own, not 
a piece of their father's. The spirit of the age working 
in the minds of men led them ever westward to conquer 
for themselves a homestead, forced them to go, leaving 
the aged behind, and the graves of the weak on the way. 

There must be a strong race principle behind a move- 



2 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

ment of such magnitude, with such momentous conse- 
quences. Elbow room, space, and isolation to give free 
play to individual preference, characterized pioneer days. 
The cord that bound the whole was love of home,— 
one's own home, — even if tinged with impatience of the 
restraints it imposed, for home and house do imply a 
certain restraint in individual wishes. And here, per- 
haps, is the greatest significance of the family house. 
It cannot perfectly suit all members in its details, but 
in its great office, that of shelter and privacy — owner- 
ship — the house of the nineteenth century stands supreme. 
No other age ever provided so many houses for single 
families. It stands between the community houses of 
primitive times and the hives of the modem city tenements. 

As sociologically defined, the family means a common 
house — common, that is, to the family, but excluding all 
else. This exclusiveness is foreshadowed in the habits of 
the majority of animals, each pair preempting a partic- 
ular log or burrow or tree in which to rear its young, to 
which it retreats for safety from enemies. Primitive man 
first borrowed the skins of animals and their burrowing 
habits. The space under fallen trees covered with moss 
and twigs grew into the hut covered with bark or sod. 
The skins permitted the portable tent. 

It is indeed a far cry from these rude defences against 
wind and weather to the dwelling-houses of the well-to-do 
family in any country to-day, but the need of. the race 



THE HOUSE AND WHAT IT SIGNIFIES. 3 

is just the same : protection, safety from danger, a shield 
for the young child, a place where it can grow normally 
in peaceful quiet. It behooves the community to inquire 
whether the houses of to-day are fulfilling the primary 
purposes of the race in the midst of the various other 
uses to which modern man is putting them. 

As already shown, shelter in its first derivation, as well 
as in its common use, signifies protection from the weather. 
Bodily warmth saves food, therefore is an economy in 
living. From the first it also implied protection from 
enemies, a safe retreat from attack and a refuge when 
wounded. But above all else it has, through the ages, 
stood for a safe and retired place for the bringing up of 
the young of the species. 

The colonial houses of New England with large 
living-room, dominated by the huge fireplace with its 
outfit of cooking utensils, with groups of buildings for 
different uses clustered about them, giving protection to 
the varied industries of the homestead, illustrate the 
most perfect type of family life. Each member had a 
share in the day's work, therefore to each it was home. 
To the old homestead many a successful business man 
returns to show his grandchildren the attic with its 
disused loom and spinning-wheel; the shop where 
farm- implements were made, in the days of long winter 
stornis, to the accompaniment of legend and gossip; 
the dairy, no longer redolent of cream. These are re- 



4 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

minders of a time past and gone, before the greed of 
gain had robbed even these houses of their peace. The 
backward glance of this generation is too apt to stop at 
the transition period, when the factory had taken the 
interesting manufactures out of the hands of the house- 
wife and left the homestead bereft of its best, when the 
struggle to make it a modem money-making plant, for 
which it was never designed, drove the young people 
away to less arduous days and more exciting evenings. 

This stage of farm life was altogether unlovely, not 
wholly of necessity, but because the adjustment was most 
painful to the feelings and most difficult to the muscles 
of the elders. 

Because the family ideal was the ruling motive, the 
house- building of the colonial period shows a more 
perfect adaptation to family life than any other age has 
developed. 

Where is the boasted adaptabihty of the American? 
He should be ready to see the effect of the inevitable 
mechanical changes and modify his ideas to suit. For 
it cannot be too often reiterated that it is a case of ideasy 
not of wood and stone and law. 

This homestead has passed into history as completely 
as has the Southern colonial type, differing only in 
arrangement. CHmate, as well as domestic conditions, 
demanded a more complete separation of the manu- 
facturing processes, including cooking, laundry, etc., 



THE HOUSE AND WHAT IT SIGNIFIES. 



otherwise the ideal was the same. ^'The house" meant 
a family life, a gracious hospitality, a busy hive of in- 
dustry, a refuge indeed from social as well as physical 
storms. Work and play, sorrow and pleasure, all were 
connected with its outward presentment as with the 
thought. For its preservation men fought and women 
toiled, but, alas! machinery has swept away the last ves- 
tige of this life and, try as the philanthropist may to bring 
it back, it will never return. The very essence of that Ufe 
was the making of things, the preparation for winter 
while it was yet summer, the furnishing of the bridal 
chest years before marriage. Fancy a bride to-day 
wearing or using in the house anything five years old! 

There are no more pioneer and colonial communities 
on this continent. Railroads and steamboats and 
electric power have made this rural life a thing of the 
past. Let us not waste tears on its vanishing, but ad- 
dress ourselves to the future. 

There are two directions in which great change in 
household conditions has occurred quite outside the 
volition of the housekeeper. They are the disappearance 
of industries, and lack of permanence in the homestead. 
Those who are busily occupied in productive work of 
their own are contented and usually happy. The 
results of their efforts, stored for future use —bams filled 
with hay or grain, shelves of Hnen and preserves — yield 
satisfaction. 



6 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

Destructive consumption may be pleasurable for the 
moment, but does not satisfy. The child pulls the 
stuffing from the doll with pleasure, but asks for another 
in half an hour. The dehcious meal daintily served is 
a joy for an hour. A room put in perfect order, clean, 
tastefully decorated, is a delight to the eye for three 
hours and then it must be again cleaned and rearranged. 
Is this productive v^ork? Is there any reason why we 
should be satisfied with it or happy in it? 

In an earlier time, that from which we derive so many 
of our cherished ideals, the house built by or for the 
young people was used as a homestead by their children 
and their children's children. Customs grew up slowly, 
and for some reason. Furniture, collected as wanted, 
found its place; all the routine went as by clockwork. 
Saturday's baking of bread and pies went each on to 
its own shelf, as the cows went each to her own stall. If 
the duties were physically hard, the routine saved worrying. 

To-day how few of us Hve in the house we began 
hfe with! How few in that we occupied even ten years 
ago! And this number is growing smaller and smaller. 
The housewife has not time to form habits of her own; 
she engages a maid and expects her to fall at once into 
the family ways, when the family has no w^ays. 

In the sociological sense, shelter may mean protection^ 
from noise, from too close contact with other human 
beings, enemies only in the sense of depriving us of 



THE HOUSE AND \\'HAT IT SIGNIFIES. 7 

valuable nerv^e-force. It should mean sheltering the 
children from contact with degrading influences. 

Charles P. Xeill, United States Commissioner of 
Labor, in his address at the New York School of Philan- 
thropy, July 16, 1905, said: ''In my own estimation 
home, above all things, means privacy. It means the 
possibility of keeping your family off from other famihes. 
There must be a separate house, and as far as possible 
separate rooms, so that at an early period of Hfe the idea 
of rights to property, the right to things, to privacy, may 
be instilled.'' 

There may be such a thing as too much shelter. To 
cover too closely breeds decay. Are we in danger of 
covering ourselves and our children too closely from 
sun and wind and rain, making them weak and less resist- 
ant than they should be? The prevalence of tubercu- 
losis and its cure by fresh air seems to indicate this. 
The attempt to gain privacy under prevaihng conditions 
tends this way. 

Hitherto students of social economics have usually con- 
sidered the most pressing problem in the Ufe of the wage- 
earner to be that of sufficient and suitable food. But in 
any large city and in most smaller communities there are 
found those who have refined instincts, aspirations for 
a Hfe of physical and moral cleanness, who by force 
of circumstances arc obliged to come in contact with 
filth and squalor and careless disorder in order to find 



8 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

shelter. If they can be kept from degenerating, their 
rise when it comes will lift those below them, but it is 
a Herculean task to lift them by Hfting all below as well. 
The burden which presses most heavily on this valu- 
able material for social betterment is that of shelter 
rather than of food. 

The thought underlying this whole series on Cost is 
that the place to put the leaven of progress is in the 
middle. The class to work for is the great mass of 
intelligent, industrious, and ambitious young people 
turned out by our pubHc schools with certain ideals for 
self-betterment, but in grave danger of losing heart in 
the crush due to the pressure of society around them 
and above them. They fear to incur the responsibihty 
of marriage when they see the pecuniary requirements 
it involves. 

This growing body makes up so large a proportion of 
the whole in America that, once aroused, it may become 
an all-powerful force for regeneration, thanks to the 
pervading influence of pubUc-school education when 
enUsted on the side of right. Faith in the uprightness 
of American youth is so strong that strenuous effort 
for their enlightenment is justified. Once they have 
their attention drawn to the need of action, they will act. 
Self-preservation is one of the strongest instincts, and it 
may be dangerous to call upon the self-interest of these 
inexperienced souls; but for the sake of the results we 



THE HOUSE AND WHAT IT SIGNIFIES. Q 

must risk the lesser evil, if we can develop a resolution to 
secure a personal and race efficiency. 

When the young people, with a deep appreciation of 
the possibilities of sane *and wholesome living, marry 
and attempt to realize their ideals, the conditions are 
all against them. They find little sympathy in their 
yearnings for a rational life, and soon give up the effort, 
deciding that they are too pecuHar. They slip almost 
insensibly into the routine of their neighbors. There 
is great need of a cooperation of like-minded young 
married people to form a little community, setting its 
own standards and living a fairly independent life. Two 
or three such groups would do more than many sermons 
to awaken attention to the problem before the race 
to-day. Shall man yield himself to the tendencies of 
natural selection and be modified out of existence by 
the pressure of his environment, or shall he turn upon 
himself some of the knowledge of Nature's forces he 
has gained and by '^conscious evolution" begin an 
adaptation of the environment to the organism? For 
we no longer hold with Robert Owen and the sociaHsts 
that man is necessarily controlled and moulded by his 
surroundings, that he is absolutely subject to the laws 
of animal evolution. A new era will dawn when man 
sees his power over his own future. Then, and not 
till then, will come again that willingness to sacrifice 
present ease and pleasure for the sake of race progress. 



10 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

which alone can make the restrained hfe a satisfac- 
tion. 

The environment is, more largely than we think, the 
house and the manner of life it forces upon us. There- 
fore the first point of attack is the shelter under which 
the family life of the newly married pair establishes 
itself. If it is too large for their income, it leads 
to extravagance and debt before the first two years 
have passed; if it is too small, it cramps the generous 
and hospitable impulses. If unsuited to this need, it 
irritates and deforms character, as a plaster cast com- 
presses a Hmb encased in it. 

Imagine the young people beginning life in the average 
city flat, at a rent of twenty to thirty dollars a month, 
with its shams, its makeshifts, its depressing, unsanitary, 
morally unsafe quarters for the maid, its friction v^ith 
janitor and landlord — the whole sordid round necessitated 
by the mere manner of building, and by that only. 

A few strong souls flee to the country. Counting the 
cost and finding that all the earnings go to mere living, 
they decide to get that living in company with nature 
under free skies — their own employers. Such may live in 
Altruria with the happy zest of the authors of that 
charming sketch. 

It is not given to many of earth's children to be so well 
mated and so heavenly-wise. The young man has been 
brought up to consider the house the young wife's pre- 



THE HOUSE AND WHAT IT SIGNIFIES. U 

rogative, and she — well, she has been trained to beheve 
that housewifely wisdom will come to her as unsought as 
measles. 

Two thirds the friction in the early years of married 
life is caused by the house and its defects, resulting in 
dissatisfaction, disenchantment, and the flight to a hotel 
or non-housekeeping apartment. 

If some of the problems to be faced and the difficul- 
ties in solving them could be presented to the young people 
to be studied and discussed before the actual encounter 
came, they would be more prepared 

In discussing this part of the subject, as in the con- 
sideration of the Cost of Living in general and the 
Cost of Food, we shall deal in particular with incomes 
of from $1000 to $5000 a year for families of five, recog- 
nizing that under present-day conditions the annual 
sum of $1500 to $3000 means the greatest struggle be- 
tween desires and power of gratifying them. 

On the surface it appears that the things which go to 
make up deUcate cleanly hving cost more and more each 
year, with no limit in sight. It is not only the poet who 
moves from one boarding-house to another; the young 
clerk and struggling business man go into smaller and 
smaller quarters until the traditional limit of room to 
swing a cat is reached. 

The constantly diminishing space occupied by a 
family seems to prove that the 40% increase in the cost 



12 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

of living within a few years is not caused by an advance 
in the necessary cost of food; it is certainly not due to 
the increased cost of necessary clothes. It is more than 
probable that the increasing cost of shelter and all that 
it implies — increased water-supply, service, repairs, etc. — 
is the main factor in the undoubtedly increased expense. 
This will be considered in some detail in Chapter VIII. 

While the socialist may take the ground that salaries 
must be raised to keep pace with the rise in living 
expenses, the student of social ethics — Euthenics, or the 
science of better living — may well ask a consideration of 
the topic from another standpoint. Is this increased 
cost resulting in higher efficiency? Are the people 
growing more healthy, well-favored, well-proportioned, 
stronger, happier? If not, then is there not a fallacy 
in the common idea that more money spent means a 
fuller Hfe? 

Recent examination of school children in various 
cities in England and America has revealed a state of 
physical ill-being most deplorable in the present, and 
horrifying to contemplate for its future results. One 
has only to keep one's eyes open in passing the streets 
to become aware of the physical deterioration of thousands 
of the wage-earners. One has only to listen to the house- 
wife's complaints of inefficiency, lack of strength among 
the housemaids, to reahze that the world's work is not 
being well done in so far as it depends upon human hands. 



THE HOUSE AND WHAT IT SIGNIFIES. 1 3 

This loss of efficiency is usually attributed to insuffi- 
cient food and long hours, but it is at least an open 
question if housing conditions are not the more potent 
factor not only in the case of the very poor, but even in 
the case of the family having an income of $2000 a year. 
Life in a boarding-house adapted from the use by one 
family to that of five or six without increase of bathing 
and ventilating conveniences, with old-style plumbing, 
cannot be mentally or bodily invigorating. 

The house cannot be said to be a place of safety so 
long as the '' great white plague ^^ lurks in every dark 
corner — tuberculosis, colds, influenza, etc., fasten them- 
selves upon its occupants. Explorers exposed to 
extremes of weather do not thus suffer. The dark, 
damp house incubates the germs. 

But homes there must be : places of safety for children, 
of refuge for elders. Men will marry and women may 
keep house. How shall it be managed so as to be in 
harmony with present-day demands? Certainly not by 
ignoring the difficulties. Progress in any direction does 
not come through wringing of hands and deploring the 
decadence of the present generation. President Roose- 
velt's advice is to bring up boys and girls to overcome ob- 
stacles, not to ignore them. Let the educated, intcUigcnt 
young people join in devising a way to surmount this ob- 
stacle as the engineers of 1890 invented new ways of cross- 
ing impassable gorges and "impossible '' mountain ranges. 



14 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

The writer has no ready-prepared panacea to offer. 
Patent medicine is not the remedy. This kind cometh 
out only by fasting and prayer. A long course of diet 
is needed to cure a chronic disease. 

This little volume is intended merely as a spur to the 
imagination of the indolent student, to arouse him to the 
mental effort required to deal with the readjustment of 
ideas to conditions before it is too late. 

It is no exaggeration to say that the social well-being 
of the community is threatened. The habits of years 
are broken up; sad to say, the middle-aged will suffer 
unreUeved, but the young can be incited to grapple 
with the situation and hew out for themselves a way 
through. 

Certain elements in the problem will be touched upon 
in the following pages as a result of much going to and 
fro in the ^'most favored land on earth." Certain 
questions will be raised as to what constitutes a home 
and a shelter for the family in the twentieth-century 
sense of both family and shelter. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE HOUSE CONSIDERED AS A MEASURE OF SOCIAL 
STANDING. 

It is not what we lack, but what we see others have, that makes 
us discontented. 

There has been noted in every age a tendency to 
measure social preeminence by the size and magnifi- 
cence of the family abode. Mediaeval castles, Venetian 
palaces, colonial mansions, all represented a form of 
social importance, what Veblen has called conspicuous 
waste. This was largely shown in maintaining a large 
retinue and in giving lavish entertainments. The so- 
called patronage of the arts — furnishings, fabrics, pic- 
tures, ^statues, valued to this day — came under the 
same head of rivalry in expenditure. 

In America a similar aspiration results in immense 
estabHshments far beyond the needs of the immediate 
family. But, unlike society in the middle ages, social 
aspiration does not stop short at a well-defined line. 
In the modern state each level reaches up toward the 
next higher and, failing to balance itself, drops into the 

abyss which never fills. 

IS 



l6 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

There is no contented layer of humanity to equalize 
the pressure; heads and hands are thrust up through 
from below at every point. Democracy has taken 
possession of the age and must be reckoned with on all 
sides. 

At first sight sumptuous housing might seem to be the 
least objectionable form of conspicuous waste. Safer 
than rich food, less wasteful than gorgeous clothing, but, 
as Veblen truly says, ''through discrimination in favor of 
visible consumption it has come about that the domestic 
life of most classes is relatively shabby. As a consequence 
people habitually screen their private life from observa- 
tion." This is from a different motive than the instinct 
of privacy, of personal withdrawal for rest and quiet. 
This shabby private life is why true hospitahty is disap- 
pearing. The chance guest is no longer welcome to the 
family table; we are ashamed of our daily routine, or 
we have an idea that our fare is not worthy of being 
hared. Whatever it is, unconscious as it often is, it is 
a canker in the family life of to-day. It leads to selfish- 
ness, to a laxness in home manners very demoralizing. 
It is doubtless one of the great factors in the distinct 
deterioration of children's pubhc manners. 

Because the house is held to be the visible evidence 
of social standing, because its location, style of architec- 
ture, fittings and furniture may be made to proclaim the 
pretensions of its inhabitants, it is often dishonest and 



THE HOUSE A MEASURE OF SOCIAL STAXDIXG. 1 7 

one of the sources of the prevalent untruth in other 
things, since dishonesty in housing has been not infre- 
quently one of the first signs of dishonesty in business. 
To move to a less fashionable quarter is to confess finan- 
cial stress at once. 

It is because the concomitant expenses of an estabHsh- 
rnent may be curtailed without attracting pubHc notice 
that a moral danger exists. The outside shell is not 
the whole nor even the chief outlay. The operating 
expenses run away with more money than the house 
itself, and it is in these that the family, conscious of 
impending ruin, curtail, and thus become dishonest in 
their own souls. 

The moral of it all is to live just a Httle below the 
probable limit, whatever that may be, rather than to 
assume a greater income than is quite certain. Granted 
that in the quickly changing conditions of to-day this is 
difficult, it is not often impossible. 

It is only needed to set some other standard of social 
position than shelter and to use the house for its legitimate 
purposes only, that of an abode of the family in health 
and joyful cooperation. The class for which this series 
is written should seek a shelter sufficient for these normal 
uses, and make it so home-Hke that friends will gladly 
share it when permitted. 

Let good manners, keen intelligence, bright and 
entertaining conversation take the place of the showy 



i8 ^^Th^!oS of shelter. 

but frequently uncomfortable houses and wholesale 
entertainments of to-day. 

It is time that a beginning was made of that form 
of social pleasure and mental recreation which the cen- 
tury must develop, or fail of its promise. 

What is the value, of present-day knowledge if not to 
stimulate the conscious group, through the individual 
perhaps, but the group finally, to better use of its powers 
and opportunities toward a higher form of social Hfe ? 

We have been told that the house should be as much 
an expression of individuaHty as clothes. Since clothes 
are constantly and easily changed, and a family home 
built to order is comparatively permanent, such expres- 
sion in wood or stone should be carefully thought out; 
but how rarely do we gain a pleasant impression from 
the houses built for the purpose of setting forth social 
standards! The owner and the architect have neither 
of them the highest ideals, and a sort of ready-made, 
composite, often irritating, always displeasing result 
follows. The pretence shows through more often than 
the occupant reaHzes. 

Society has the power to regulate its own conven- 
tions. Once convinced that it is dangerous to put the 
strain of Hving on to mere superficial pretence, mere 
location, ornament, new standards will be set up; as, 
indeed, they are under other conditions. In frontier 
life, for instance, where shortness of tenure is recognized, 



THE HOUSE A MEASURE OF SOCIAL STANDING. 1 9 

dress and the table take the place of the house as indica- 
tions. In a mining town, one is astonished at the cos- 
tumes seen on persons issuing from insignificant houses, 
and at the excellent bill of fare in a restaurant with 
the barest necessities of furnishing. Cursory observa- 
tion often reads the signs of civihzation wrongly. The 
eastern traveller, accustomed to the outward ghtter and 
the finish of settled communities, fails to interpret the 
real efficiency of a more flexible society. West of the 
Mississippi, that new empire we are just beginning to 
appreciate, good food is recognized as of prime impor- 
tance, dress gives an opportunity for showing conspicu- 
ous waste, and buildings are made for show only when 
permanence of residence is assured. 

Let society once thoroughly understand that safe 
shelter is essential to its very life, that this safety is 
threatened, if not lost, by present habits, and, by 
quick money-making schemes in house-building, it 
will estabHsh standards of Hving which shall not only 
be for the material welfare, but for the mental, moral, 
and spiritual progress of the race. 

This progress can be secured by applying centrifugal 
force to congested districts, by interesting capitahsts to 
consider housing at the same time with manufacturing 
plants, not only providing safe, economical houses, 
but by making it socially possible to live in them on 
moderate incomes. 



20 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

The rising half, we must remember, is more affected 
by social conventions than the submerged tenth. 

The well-to-do should consider more conscientiously 
those who recruit their ranks, who, if started right with- 
out danger of debt, will have freedom to advance. The 
present muddle has come about in part because no one 
has taken the trouble to investigate the reasons. The 
young family with $3000 a year has ideals for the man- 
ners and morals of the children which are not satisfied 
with those of the inexpensive tenement quarter. Pre- 
vention they consider better than cure, hence they pay 
higher rent than the income warrants to secure elevating 
examples and morally wholesome surroundings. 

A single family cannot control a whole street, although 
cooperation can accomplish a great deal in the way of 
congenial neighborhoods. But the risk involved, the 
liabiHty to error of judgment, as well as the large out- 
lay of capital, at once prevents the adoption of this means 
of satisfactory housing for the business and professional 
class to any great extent, at least in the city. The acumen 
needed to discover the profitable in real estate, the skill 
to acquire large contiguous tracts of land, both belong to 
the capitaHst. Only when he is a philanthropist besides, 
is the housing question safe in his hands. Such an 
example we find in the Morris houses, Willoughby Ave., 
Brooklyn, N. Y. This set of family dweUings was 
put up to meet this very need. Congenial neighborhood, 



td 



3 

n 
c 
B 
p 



^ 



en 



o 



n 

p 

I. 
w 

3' 




*1 






1 




W 


1 




c 














1 




p^ 


I 






f 




C3 


r 




crq 






n 


^ 




o 


e- 

^ 




B 
p 


9? 






u^ 




w 


n 


o 


u 


3 


E 

'■'^r 


r^ 


> 


j3 


H. 








^* 




cr? 








n 


k! 


Q 


j/i 


o 


w 


:^ 


fr 


o 


0) 




^^ 


<; 




Crt 


o 




^ 


>~t 






F 




O 

0) 

1 

s 

5' 
P 




THE HOUSE A MEASURE OF SOCIAL STANDING. 25 

safe playgrounds for the children, labor-saving devices 
for the housekeeper. When first built they were in advance 
of anything in an eastern city of their class. To-day 



STEUBEN STREET 



7r?7^jpi:TT::^^^:T^^'^^^^^^^^^s^' 



r\ 



n 



n 



Y\ 



^^4#4^^<WM^ X 



EMERSON PLa'cE 



lIj' 



L 



ii. 



u 

D 
■Z 

u 



O 



The Morris Building Company's Block of Single Ilou.ses, 
with Central Heating Plant, Brooklyn, New York. 

Mr. Pratt has even more advanced ideas whicli will 
take form in the future. 



26 



THE cost OF SHELTER. 



These attractive and comfortable houses, so near the 
working places of the teachers and professional and busi- 




The Morris Building Company's Block of Single Houses, 
with Central Heating Plant, Brooklyn, New York. 

ness men who occupy them, were possible only because 
of the comparative cheapness of the land, which had 



THE HOUSE A MEASURE OF SOCIAL STANDING. 27 

been held undesirable for high-class single houses, not 
for sanitary reasons, but solely on account of social 
conditions. This cluster of forty houses makes its own 
atmosphere. This is the lesson to be learned. Let 




The Morris Building Company's Block of Single Houses, 
with Central Heating Plant, Brooklyn, New York. 

groups of like-minded famihes make their own surround- 
ings. The capitaHst will soon learn where his interest lies. 
Very probably it will be necessary to enlarge the 
scope and, perhaps, to build two stories higher, so 



28 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

that the elders and perhaps bachelors of both sexes, 
who do not care for the garden, may help to bear the 
expense of the children's playground. Whatever form 
the advance may take, this is a sign-post in the right 
direction. 

In the nature of things, however, the first experiments 
will be costly and must be combined with business of 
a sure kind. In this instance the heating and hot-water 
supply was made possible by a combination with factory 
plant. But if a larger group of, say, one hundred 
houses were run by a central establishment, the Mor- 
ris Building Company estimates the cost at about fifty 
dollars per year. 

These houses will be referred to again under Chapter 
VI, but the especial value of this experiment was its 
social significance. How much better to keep desirable 
land for residential purposes by such means than to 
permit families to move away and give up satisfactory 
dwellings solely because the lower end of the street has 
a few foreigners! Our older cities abound in instances 
of this quick abandonment of most desirable streets 
without any concerted effort to retain their character. 

The dangerous sanitary degeneration of these aban- 
doned houses is one of the worst features of the situ- 
ation and a prolific cause of the overcrowding of cities. 

The more thoughtful students of progressive tendencies 
are grouping themselves in ^^ parks'' where houses are 




THE HOUSE A MEASURE OF SOCIAL STANDING. 29 

put up with the aid of the capitaHst under such restric- 
tions as to price as is supposed to insure a congenial 
neighborhood, and under such regulations as to land 
as to prevent manufacturing establishments. When these 
plans are not purely speculative, designed to entrap the 
young people by their best hopes of a permanent home, 
much satisfaction may come from the plan. But even 
in this country or suburban life the shadow of fashion 
falls sooner or later, and the savings vanish with the 
years. Some deeper principle must come into play, 
some stronger force than mere whim of society leaders, 
before our young people can be released from the bondage 
of Hving on the right side of a street under penalty of 
social ostracism. 

There are gratifying indications of an awakening. 
The following statement appeared in a newspaper of a 
recent date: 

"A corporation of women has been formed in 
Indianapolis, Ind., for the purpose of building small 
but artistic houses for people of moderate means. 
All of the directors are business women; one of 
the vice-presidents is Miss Elizabeth Browning, the 
city librarian, and another is the principal of one 
of the pubhc schools. The secretary has for some 
time been in charge of the office of a savings and loan 
association and is the only woman member of the 
Indianapolis fire insurance insi)cclion board. Six liouscs 



30 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

are to be erected at once in various parts of the 
city. '' 

No better use of money or effort can be made at the 
present time than in similar endeavors to meet the needs 
of the time. The study of conditions will prove an 
education in itself and a stimulus to invention. 

When the social conscience is once awakened the 
bride with $2000 a year will not be expected to begin 
where her mother left off. 

The young people will be provided with just as com- 
fortable and just as sanitary homes, but they will not 
be expected to entertain lavishly in order to show the 
wedding presents before they are broken. They will 
be visited, even if they live in an unfashionable quarter 
on a side street. Is it not more honest? 

If society would put its stamp on the manner of life 
adapted to the welfare of the young people, it would not 
be unfashionable to live within one's income. 

The tyranny of things is very real and most distressing 
in connection with this problem of shelter and all that 
it involves. 

There is only needed a social awakening to result in 
an adjustment of men's views as to what is good and 
right. New social habits adapted to the age we live in 
will be accepted by the next generation as good form. 



i 



CHAPTER III. 

LEGACIES FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

NOT ADAPTED TO CHANGED CONDITIONS CAUSE 

PHYSICAL DETERIORATION AND 

DOMESTIC FRICTION. 

**A large part of the evils of which we complain socially to-day 
are due to the kind of houses we live in and the exactions they make 
upon us."— H. G. Wells. 

Four classes of houses have come down to us: 
(i) The family homestead in the country set low on 
the ground with damp walls and dark cellar, one of a 
cluster of rambling buildings ; with a well, the only water 
supply, in close proximity to various sources of pollution. 
These houses are for the most part now abandoned to the 
foreigner, who uses them for the primitive purposes of 
shelter without the ennobhng intellectual life they once 
harbored. Now and then a grandson rescues the old 
place, brings water from a spring or brook, digs a drain, 
lets light into the cellar, and builds on a kitchen and 
dining-room. 

The expense is often greater than to build anew, but 
the effect is usually very good when the changes are 
made under sanitary supervision. 

31 



32 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

(2) The Village or suburban house set in its own 
grounds, too near the street usually, but with garden and 
fruit-trees in the rear, and possibly a stable for horse and 
cow. This was the compromise made by the generation 
just from the free life of the farm-house, who, consciously 
or unconsciously, clung to the green of grass and trees, 
and the blue of the sky. So long as habit or love of caring 
for the things lasted all went well. The father found his 
recreation in planting the garden before breakfast, as 
in his boyhood. The mother cared for flower and vege- 
table-garden, as she recalled her mother's life; she picked 
her own beans and com, even if she did not cook the 
dinner. 

But the children had to hurry off to school, and it was 
a pity to call them early: they had lessons to learn in 
the afternoon. To them the garden was work, not play 
as it should have been ; so they failed to gain that contact 
with mother earth which gives inspiration as well as 
health; they failed to acquire a love of nature, became 
infected with the germ of gregariousness, preferred the 
glare of lights, the rush of hurrying crowds, and lost 
the rehsh for fresh air and quiet. This second genera- 
tion came to the city boarding-house and flat as soon as 
they were free, leaving their parents' houses to go the 
same way as the grandfather's farmhouse, into the hands 
of the foreigner not yet Americanized to high standards 
of cleanHness and orderliness. 



4 



A 



LEGACIES FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 33 

These houses, too, are settling down into unkempt 
grounds with dilapidated porches and blinds. Such eye- 
sores as one finds on the trolley-lines in any direction! 
They may have town-water supply, or they may depend 
on wells, but they are frequently without sewer-connection. 

It is costly to be neat and clean, and only those whose 
minds require such surroundings in order to be com- 
fortable will pay the cost in time, trouble, and money. 

(3) Some families made a compromise and built 
what is called a modem house with bath-room and 
furnace (after the air-tight-stove craze passed), with jig- 
saw ornamentation outside and in, pretentious-looking 
dwellings with no proper kitchen accompaniments, and 
an unsavory garbage-barrel in the small back yard, under 
the next neighbor's windows. These houses are so close 
together that sounds and smells mingle; there is so Httle 
land that there is no satisfaction in caring for it. Houses 
of this sort are altogether too frequently found, occupying 
good locations and jarring on the nerves of the better- 
trained young people of to-day. What is to be done with 
them ? They are too expensive to pull down, and hence 
are the last resort of those who find they must retrench. 
They are mere temporary shelters, not loved homes. 

The plumbing is usually of a cheap order, and the drains 
arc not infrequently broken, so that sanitarily these 
dwellings arc often more suspicious than the abandoned 
farmhouse. 



34 



THE COST OF SHELTER. 



(4) The influx from village and country made de- 
mand for city housing of an inexpensive sort, and there 
came into being all over the land the type of the family 
house squeezed by the price of land to four stories high, 
16 to 20 feet wide, built in long rows and blocks. The 
**ugly sixties" bred not only distressful village *^ villas, '' 
but unpleasant city houses of this type, which are to-day 
a real menace to wholesome living. Many such blocks 
may be found in any of our older cities, casting a de- 
pressing influence upon all who come in sight of them, 
and deteriorating the manners and morals of all who 
live in them. For these have gone the way of the other 
classes mentioned and become perverted from the uses 
they were designed for. In the seventies there were 
still lyiotherly women who had come to town to make a 
home for the children no longer content out of it. They 
were willing and capable of mothering a few other children 
and lonely teachers and clerks, so the boarding-house 
began as a real family home for the homeless. There 
were not enough of these women to go around, and soon 
boarding-houses began to be run for profit only. Home 
privileges were fewer and fewer, the common parlor 
was rented, the one-family kitchen was made to do duty 
for twenty persons. The house became pervaded with 
burned fat and tobacco-smoke — a most villainous C0171- 
bination, gossip flourished, and the limit of discom- 
fort was reached. What wonder that a good Samaritan 



LEGACIES FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 35 

built the first flat where the wearied nerves could find 
peace in the thicker walls, and could escape the eternal 
^^fry'' by going out to meals! It is a perfectly natural 
evolution from the impossible conditions which the 
eighties and nineties developed. 

The early attempts, built on the old lines after the old 
ideas, before the new life was accepted, are not satis- 
factory and, being built of brick or stone, they are even 
more difficult to get rid of than the preceding. So each 
type goes down in the scale of decent living. A given 
roof is made to cover more people crowding closer and 
closer, causing home in the sense of privacy and comfort 
to recede farther and farther away, until the lover of 
his kind stands aghast at the magnitude of the problem 
before society when it awakens to the task confronting it. 
Fortunately these rows of houses are disappearing under 
the demand of business. The invasion of the residential 
district is a real blessing, in that it pulls down these houses 
which in twenty years have outlived their usefulness 
and can serve a good purpose no longer. 

Let us hope that either the demands of business or 
the common sense of society will also sweep away the 
fifth class: (5) City flats put up by the conscienceless 
money-maker with only that idea of giving the pubHc 
what the pubhc wants (because it knows no better) which 
gives the newspaper its pernicious influences. At first it 
was supposed the flat-dwcUers would keep house, and 



36 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

arrangements of a sort were made. This compressed 
the work of the house into such small quarters that the 
maid was given a room down in the basement along 
with the furnace, or in the top story adjoining ten or more 
other rooms — a dormitory arrangement without supervision 
and without the quiet needed for rest. The difficulty 
of securing good service under these conditions, together 
with the thousand and one annoyances of living at too 
close quarters, noisy children and pianos, grumpy janitors, 
smelly garbage, have led to the latest phase: non-house- 
keeping flats with daily care of a sort supplied by the janitor 
if desired, a kitchenette where eggs and coffee for break- 
fast and dishes for invalids may be prepared, and restau- 
rants galore for other meals. Thus the women of the 
family are set free to roam the streets in search of bar- 
gains and to join others like unto themselves for matinees 
and promenades. 

This sort of shelter is increasing more rapidly than 
any other in all the cities investigated. An estimate 
has been made that 80 or 90 per cent of the recent build- 
ing has been of this sort. Six rooms in an unfashionable 
locality rent for about $25 or $30 a month; in a fashion- 
able quarter, for $200 to $250 per month, with a floor- 
space one half larger. These latter cost about 50 
cents per week per room for daily care, whereas the 
former, if cared for from outside, are served only at 
intervals of two weeks or a month. The inmates do 



LEGACIES FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 37 

most of the daily care themselves. While the building 
is new and fresh this means little work ; but as time goes 
on the poor construction shows, the surface varnish wears 
off, cracks come, and a general shabbiness appears, so that 
the tenant prefers to move into a new building. The 
owner, or more probably the agent, puts on a httle shining 
varnish, and rents again without real repair, and these 
buildings also go from bad to worse. Many of them are 
known to change tenants two or three times a year. 
There is always a demand for the newest house. 

A study of social conditions reveals the fact that for 
the larger part of the wage-earners the house has come 
to be the place where money is spent, not earned or even 
saved. It has gone back to its primitive use — shelter 
from weather and a sleeping-place, a temporary one at 
that. A real-estate authority has made the assertion 
that three fifths of the rent-payers in large cities are 
made up of non-householders and one half of these 
are confined to one room — mostly women. This indi- 
cates a change in requirements for the housing of the 
individual as distinguished from the family. And it is 
this element which has complicated city living to a 
gre?.t extent, and to which attention has been drawn by 
the accusation that home Hfe is shirked by it. 

To the bachelor man and maid are added the com- 
mercial traveller who leaves wife and possibly child 
behind four fifths of the time. For him, as for several 



38 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

other classes of young business men, the locaHty which 
he can choose for headquarters changes with the require- 
ments of business. He is under orders and must go at 
a monent's notice across the continent, perhaps. It is 
not his fault but the exigency of business that destroys 
the desire for a permanent abiding-place. The numbers 
of such homeless young people are far greater than any 
one but the real-estate agent reahzes. Then this loosening 
of the home tie renders easy the shifting from city to 
country and seashore. A considerable proportion of the 
$2000 to $5000 class shut up the flat or leave the board- 
ing-house several times in the year. There is usually 
one place where the furniture and bric-a-brac and the 
other season^ s clothing are kept, but it is only a store- 
house or a temporary retreat that holds their property, 
growing less and less as they move, until they may prac- 
tically live in their trunks. 

The legacy which outranks all the others in disastrous 
consequences is the notion that the young people must 
begin where their parents left off; that the house 
must be, if anything, a little more elaborate. There- 
fore in starting life the rent is allowed to consume one 
third the income in sight, without considering the cost of 
maintaining such an estabhshment. With a probable 
income of $2000 a year the young man does not hesitate 
to pay $500 for a house, not reahzing that at least half as 
much more should be spent on wages for the care of the 



1 



LEGACIES FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 39 

nineteenth-century house, and as much more on inciden- 
tals, car-fares, and unexpected demands. What wonder 
that the young people find themselves in debt by the sec- 
ond year? 

The parents are quite as much, if not more, to blame 
for encouraging this extravagance. The father and 
mother are entitled to their ease and to the use of their 
income for it, but the newly married pair have, in this 
age, no right to assume the same attitude. They have 
their way to make, their work to do in the years ahead 
of them. They should not mortgage the future for the 
sake of the present luxury; and because of the uncertain- 
ties of occupation and of health it is wise to take out of 
the expected income one fourth or one third for a reserve 
fund and divide the remainder for expenses. For instance, 
from $2000 a year subtract $500, then divide the $1500 
into $300 for rent, $300 for food, $300 for operating 
expenses, $200 for clothing, $200 for travel, leaving $200 
for the other expenses. If unlooked-for expenses must 
be incurred, there is the $500 to draw upon; but do not 
court the extra outlay: save the nest-egg if possible. 

The ideals of the home are said to rule the world. 
The young business man who does not take the sane 
view of his own expenses will not rightly consider his 
employer's interests. It is more than probable that the 
much-deplored laxness, to call it by no harsher name, in 
business circles is directly traceable to this falseness 



40 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

and dishonesty in standards of home life. This moral 
effect is what makes the housing problem so serious. 
It leads to an outward show not balanced by an abiHty 
to maintain an inner Ufe in harmony. It leads to an 
attempt to carry on a four-servant house with two serv- 
ants, or a three servant estabhshment with one. 

Lack of study and experience leads the family living 
in the suburbs, in one of the worst legacies of the past, 
to attempt the same style as friends maintain in a lately 
built apartment house, without in the least understanding 
wherein the difference lies. 

From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Maine to Texas, 
comes the same dull and sullen roar of domestic unrest. 
Lack of faithful service is causing the abandonment of 
the family home, and the fear of the obstacles in the 
way of estabhshing new ones threatens the whole social 
fabric. 

The housewife is inclined to connect this state of things 
almost entirely with food preparation, and is prone to 
fancy that if eating could be abohshed peace would 
return. 

The trouble goes much deeper, however, even to the 
foundations. The nineteenth-century house is not 
suited to twentieth-century needs. In other words, 
lack of adaptation to present conditions of the houses 
we live in is a large factor in the prevaiHng domestic 
discontent. The next largest has been referred to as 



LEGACIES FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 4I 

attempting a style of living beyond one^s income. 
In all other walks of life, in transportation, in manufac- 
turing, machinery has come in to replace the heavier 
and more mechanical portions of labor. The steam- 
shovel, the hoisting-engine, an infinite combination of 
mechanical principles have been appUed to the doing 
of things to save human muscle. To stand by the 
machine which turns out the famihar grape-basket, 
ready to fill with the fruit, and then to watch the house- 
maid bending over some piece of work, is to reaHze the 
difference. In few, very few operations is it necessary 
to-day that men should bend their backs, but in how 
many household processes is the worker expected to get 
down on all fours? The free-bom American rebels. 
Perchance it is the unconscious protest over a four- 
footed ancestry, or it may be that disuse has really weak- 
ened the spinal column. Whatever the cause, the fact 
remains. It is not the idea of work, of service, but of 
bending the back to work that is so repugnant; likewise 
the effect on the hands of hot water and scrubbing. 
Close observation has convinced me that care of the hands 
has become an indication of freedom from manual labor 
quite unthought of fifteen or twenty years ago. The 
increase of manicuring-rooms, like the increase of res- 
taurants, is a clear sign of the trend of the times. Not 
only the class who likes to waste conspicuously, but many 
a teacher, many a young man in State or Government 



42 



THE COST OF SHELTER. 



employ with an income of one, two, or three thousand 
a year patronizes these rooms. 

This dain iness reflects downward, and the girl whose 
acquaintances in her high-school days are in a position to 
keep well manicured, if not ^*hly-white," hands does not 
Uke to have hers show the effect of housework, w^hen that 
means scrubbing the floor and cleaning the stove. Gloves ? 
Ah, well, James Nasmyth once wrote: ^^ Kid-gloves are 
great non-conductors of knowledge. " I believe that gloves 
of any kind are a makeshift in real cleaning of dirty 
comers; but there should not he corners to catch dirt. 

The unnecessary nastiness of the scrub- water with its 
fine soot which works into every pore is a great objection 
to the girl who must work for her living. If she goes to 
visit her friends, her hands betray her. She can remove 
the other badges of her toil, her cap and apron ; she may 
go out on the street as brave as her mistress; but the 
moment her gloves are removed her hands tell the tale. 
With the means at hand this need not be. It is one of 
the legacies which have come down to us, and which we 
have connected with the servant problem. The work 
in the most modem apartments does not require the soihng 
of the hands in a serious way. With hard wood floors, 
bright gas-stoves, porcelain lined dishes, no pots and ^ 
kettles, all the stairs, halls, etc., cared for by the janitor, 
the work is of a far less smutting kind than in the 
suburban house, where there is still need for much 



LEGACIES FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 43 

cleaning up of a roughening sort which cannot be 
escaped. This has more to do than we are apt to 
think with the distaste for the country, unless several 
servants are kept, some for this work only. In the 
old type of city house the travel up- and down-stairs to 
answer bell and telephone has demanded strength of back 
not possessed by the modem maid. The house is not yet 
adapted to the new demands of the workers^ and they 
shun it. The mistress herself finds it beyond her strength, 
even if the traces of rough work were not quite so dis- 
tasteful to her. 

Miss Pettengill in her story of domestic service brings 
out the great part played by sooty dust, sifting in even 
through closed windows, in the burden of the waitress 
who is expected to keep the dining-room immacu- 
late. 

This is only one instance where the blame really 
belongs on the actual material house rather than on the 
mistress, except that she does not discover a remedy, 
does not even know where to look for the cause. I 
have great faith in the business woman, who docs see 
much that is better done and who will bring it back into 
the home. 

Fashions in philanthropy do not yet tend in the direc- 
tion of house betterment. 

"A busy man cannot stop his Hfe-work to leach archi- 
tects what they ought to know,'' says Wells; but on the 



44 



THE COST OF SHELTER. 



other hand '^we cannot be expected to teach men and 
their wives, as well as draw plans for them," says the 
architect who has tried it. 

The centrifugal forces that our social prophets are so 
fond of invoking, holding that the words ^'town" and 
''city'' may become as obsolete as ''mail-coach," will 
have to reckon with these features of country life. 

It is assumed that the work of women is " housekeeping." 
I should hke to put the question suddenly to a thousand 
men. What is twentieth-century housekeeping ? I venture 
the guess that less than a hundred would take into account 
the utter difference in their wives^ duties from their 
mothers^ as they remember them; and yet the house, even 
the flat, is built more or less along the old lines. The 
women do not know enough to assert themselves, and have 
not the skill to show the builder what is wrong. The 
architects could tell tales if they would. The utter ig- 
norance of what a house means, of the steps necessary to 
make a successful livable place, is appalling. The young 
man who has $3000 as a legacy feels he can build. His 
wife chooses the location near her friends whose houses 
she Hkes, and the architect is called in. Do you wish 
back stairs ? Are you to keep three servants or none ? 
Do you wish the rooms separate or connecting? All such 
questions find a blank stare. " What difference does that 
make in the style and price ?^' the would-be owner says. 
The architect is not always able to show him that these 



LEGACIES FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 45 

little things are the whole problem in building a home. 
The house as a home is merely outer clothing, which 
should fit as an overcoat should, without wrinkles and 
creases that show their ready-made character. The 
woman, born housekeeper as she considers herself, is rigid 
in her ideas of what she thinks she wants, but when the 
builder has followed her plans she is far from satisfied 
with the result. She is used to material which puckers 
and stretches in her clothing; she cannot understand 
the inflexibility of wood and stone. The remedy is 
for high-school girls, probably even grammar-school 
pupils as w^ell, to have along with their drawing some 
problems in house-planning and some lessons in car- 
pentry. 

It will be seen from the foregoing glance at the rapid 
change and steady deterioration of houses that the care 
of such living-places must involve special discomforts in 
most cases. 

The time required to keep clean old spHntered floors, 
to carry pails of water up and down stairs, to dry out 
the cloths — the base boards with their grimy streaks 
tell the story of carelessness — is not counted in the 
wage schedule. 

Why is there so much dirt brought into the house? 
Because shoes and streets arc muddy. Why is there so 
much lint? Because we liave too many things in a room 
— too much wear and tear. 



46 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

And unnecessary dirt is found even in the newer apart- 
ment-houses with the ever-changing population and ever- 
lessening space for maids' quarters, together with the 
sham character of construction due to the fact that most 
of these houses have been put up by speculators at the 
lowest cost of the cheapest materials which will show wear 
in a few months. Flimsy construction is a direct result 
of the notorious lack of care taken by the tenant, so that 
quick returns must be the rule; also of the probability 
that the neighborhood will deteriorate and that a class 
which will bear crowding and be less critical will replace 
the first tenants. 

Conveniences for doing work in the houses built to 
rent, that is to bring in the greatest returns in the shortest 
time, will not be put in (for the first cost is great) 
unless the house will rent for more. The sharpest Hebrew 
or Irish landlord will allow his architect to add bath- 
tubs if he believes the flat will rent for a few dollars 
more, where he will not do it for the sake of cleanliness. 
The supply of hot water, together with the gas-stove, 
has done much to reconcile the housewife who does her 
own work to the cramped quarters of the flat, and also 
has done more than anything else to render the maids 
discontented with that legacy from the nineteenth century 
which requires the building of a coal fire before, hot 
water can be had. The coal fire makes necessary rising 
an hour earlier and this, after the late hours the seven- 



LEGACIES FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 47 

o'clock dinner enforces, causes friction all along the line. 

The acceptance by young women without a study of 
cause and effect of whatever presents itself makes them 
bad housekeepers, in the sense of ignorant ones unable 
to cope with present conditions, because lack of experi- 
ence is not supplemented by a spirit of investigation 
and a resolution to work out the problem. They seem 
to think that housekeeping is to go on in the same old 
way no matter whatever else may change, whereas it 
is most sensitive to the general direction of progress 
if they but knew it. The wage-earner is more fully 
aware of the currents of the irresistible river modern 
life has become (the slow-moving car of Juggernaut is 
no longer an adequate symbol) than is the money spender. 

Indeed is any part of the house, as we now most 
frequently find it, adapted to the uses of the twentieth 
century ? 

The careless capitaHst who makes possible the "cock- 
roach landlord," he who sublets and crowds and skimps 
the tenants for his own gain, is greatly to blame for the 
distressing conditions of the lower income limit of the 
wage- earner, but I fear he is not altogether blameless 
for the sort of house the $1500 man has to look for in 
the city. Decent living with hght and air within half 
an hour of work is growing so rare that society must take 
a hand in the matter. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PLACE OF THE HOUSE IN THE SOCIAL ECONOMY 
OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 

^^We have entered upon the period of conscious evolution, have 
begun the adaptation of the environment to the organism.'' — Sir 
Oliver Lodge. 

The hopeless pessimism of the past, that sav7 in the 
unmerciful progress of organic evolution no escape for 
the human animal from the grip of fate, is about to give 
way to the enthusiasm of conscious directing and con- 
trolling power. 

This is the beneficent result of the age of the machine. 
Man has discovered that he can not only change his 
environment, but that by this change he can modify 
himself. The hope of the future lies in the moulding of 
man's surroundings to his needs. In physiological terms, 
'^ the adaptation of structure to function.'' 

The day is long past when shelter implied chiefly a 
tight roof and a dry floor. The housing of the twentieth- 
century family means location, central and fashionable. 
It means in cost far more than what the roof covers and 

the floor supports. It means plumbing and interior 

48 



SOCIAL ECONOMY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 49 

finish; it also means a finish on the outside, smoothly 
shaven lawns and immaculate sidewalks. 

Sigh as we may for the colonial house, we confess 
that the standards of the time did not include the com- 
fort of hot baths, polished floors, plate-glass windows, 
elevators, ice-closets, and lawn-mowers. These are neces- 
sary adjuncts to what is held as merely decent living; 
how can the $2000 man have them, not why will he 
not? 

What then is the house and the Hfe in it to become 
for the great majority of famihes and individuals with 
an income of $3000 a year and necessarily nomadic 
habits. I say necessarily, because these famihes are at 
the mercy of business and social conditions quite beyond 
their control and impossible to foretell. 

So far as prophetic vision sees through the mists of 
time, the aim of the twentieth century is to live the effective 
life. 

The simple Hfe has been preached, the strenuous Hfe 
has been lauded, but, as William Barclay Parsons re- 
cently stated it:* '^We need force, we need a vigorous 
force; we need that direction and avoidance of the un- 
necessary which is simpHcity, but with cither one alone 
there is something lacking. Instead of latent force and 
great energy without control, instead of quiet gentleness, 

'•' William Barclay Parsons, N.E.A., Asbury Park, 1905. Efig. 
Record J Aug. 12, 1905. 



50 



THE COST OF SHELTER. 



of power of control without vigor to be controlled, what 
we need is force and energy applied where necessary 
and always under control, always working to a definite 
purpose, and at the same time avoiding compHcations 
and unnecessary friction. 

^^ That is to have a life whose great underlying motive 
is effectiveness. Instead of speaking of the strenuous 
life or the simple life, let us have as a doctrine 'the 
effective life.' 

'^ What we need is not merely a man who acts, but one 
w^ho does; that is, one who will do what he has to do 
regardless, of intervening obstacles. Efficiency and 
effectiveness are the key-notes of success in actual life. 
They are also the lessons taught by every parable in the 
New Testament, even if that work is regarded as a code 
of ethics, and they form the spirit of that stirring defini- 
tion of engineering * which is based on the direction of 
the vital forces of nature and the doing of things for 
mankind." 

Manufacturing concerns have found it pays them to 
provide decent tenements for their workers, but society 
has not yet awakened to the fact that the rank and file 
of the great army of salaried employees is left to fend 
for itself in a world only too prone to take advantage 
of its necessities. There is danger in this neglect of 

* ''Ability to do and the doing, efficiency, and the use of it all 
for mankind." — Tredgold's definition of Engineering. 



SOCIAL ECONOMY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 5 1 

wholesome living surroundings, because from this stratum 
develops normally the intelligence of the future, and how 
can mentally active children grow up under the prevail- 
ing unsightly and unsanitary conditions? 

Of course with the passing of pioneer conditions will 
pass in a measure the courage and adaptabiHty which 
braced itself to meet and overcome obstacles. The 
salaried position in a great combine, instead of work 
for one's self in an independent business, tends to magnify 
the value of mere money-income gained through smart- 
ness rather than by ability. If life is made too easy, 
men will settle into indolent sterility, just as animals and 
plants degenerate with too much food. 

The future will surely bring greater mechanical per- 
fection and thus leave it possible for the individual, for 
each member of the family group, to do for himself many 
little things which are not comfortable to do now. But 
will he be willing to do them? Not unless he feels it 
to be a duty or a pleasure. Not unless there is an under- 
current of principle which carries him along. Without 
this principle strong enough to give an impetus over 
hard places in the early stages of life, the individual 
and the family will surely drift into the hotel and board- 
ing-house, where everything is done on a money basis 
and nothing for love of one's kind; where a tip salves 
the hurt of menial work. These habits once gained 
are hard to break up; therefore it is much better for 



52 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

young people to begin life doing some things for them- 
selves in a house where machinery responds to their 
call without a tip, where they may economize without 
loss of self-respect. We need to revive some of the 
pagan ideals of the beauty and value of the human 
body and human life which consists in the care and 
use of this body. There is no menial work in the daily 
living rightly carried out; that which the last century 
wrongly permitted is made needless by the machinery 
of to-day. 

The point of view is most important. 

The first steps toward social betterment will come 
through a cooperation of three forces: (i) a recognition 
of the need; (2) an awakening of social conscience to the 
duty of supplying the need ; and (3) the movement of 
moneyed philanthropy to fulfil the requirement quickly. 

As was natural, sympathy flowed first to the class 
which had the most visible need, not necessarily the 
greater need. 

The New York Model Tenement Association has 
shown the w^orld how easy it is, when there is a will, 
to find a way. That association has already taken the 
first step in advanced housing, and reduced the cost of 
safe and rentable city shelter to its lowest terms. Fire- 
proof, sanitary, and convenient so far as rooms go (it 
is quite a climb for the mother with a baby in her arms 
to the sixth story), with neighbors carefully sorted, repairs 



SOCIAL ECONOMY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 53 

well looked after, a sympathetic woman as agent always 
in the office; but only a minimum of light and air and 
sun; bedrooms 7X8, living-rooms 10X13; the smallest 
spaces the law allows; no grass, no flowers outside, no 
pets, nothing of one's own that cannot be put in a 
cart; common stairways where only partial privacy is 
gained ; clothes-yards on the roof, and laundry in 
the basement, to be used in turn by twenty tenants. 
Because this is better than the slums for the emerging 
class, and because they like the gregariousness, is no 
argument for continuing the type up into the range of 
the $2000 group. But this is just what most of the 
small apartments do — those built to make all the money 
that they will bear. Hardly any better facihties are given. 
It will be easy for more roomy living-places to be built on 
similar plans, with elevators and labor-saving devices, 
and yet within the Hmit of moderate incomes, such 
blocks to be always under competent sanitary super- 
vision. 

From these model tenements it will not be difficult to 
advance to the suburban square with sufficient variety in 
house plans to content those who are willing to yield 
small personal whims. Hitherto the erratic fancy of 
would-be tenants, the dissatisfaction with the arrange- 
ments provided, has made building en masse difficult. As 
long as the builder was called upon to suit those who liad 
lived in houses of their own for many years his task was 



54 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

difficult, but now he will have to do with the young 
people who know no other Hfe and who will more readily 
fall in with the standards set by the house itself. 

For this very reason those who have social welfare at 
heart must come to the rescue, and devise and put up 
samples, of the best that modem science can offer, to rent 
for $300 to $500 a year. Let any one who loves his 
kind, if he have a talent this way, not wrap it in a napkin, 
but give it to the builder and the philanthropist to 
materialize. Now is the time to set standards for the 
next thirty years. The electric car is opening new 
country as never before. Who will make the practical 
advance ? 

These new houses will be roomy and yet, I think, will 
not fail of sun-parlors or enclosed piazzas which will serve 
as extensions of the house when occasion demands. I 
am sure they will not contain the forbidding "front 
room'' set apart for weddings and funerals and rare 
family gatherings. More open-air life will be fashion- 
able and practicable as soon as we have learned that a 
wind-break and not a tightly-enclosed space is what we 
need. In northern latitudes especially it is the wind 
which makes the cUmate seem so inclement. The 
amount of accessible sunshine may be doubled with great 
advantage in most of the semi-country-houses. Shelter 
should not suggest a prison. 

The education of the child demands that housing 



SOCIAL ECONOMY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 55 

shall include land for pets, for vegetables and flowers; 
not merely to increase beauty and selfish pleasure^ but for 
the ethical value of contact with things dependent on care 
and forethought. The thoughtful sociologist recognizes 
as one of the greatest needs for the children of to-day 
a closer companionship with fathers — is urging that 
even money-making should be secondary to the time 
given to moulding the character of the little ones, instead 
of leaving them to nurses and coachmen or to the school 
of the streets. Companionship in the garden-work will 
secure this opportunity in a natural way. 

It is only by going into the country that sufficient 
land for a simple house with yard in front and garden 
in the rear — the ideal English home — can be had. 
There will be a sacrifice of some of the things the city 
gives, but a compromise is the only possible outcome of 
many claims. 

Those who are feeling the return to Nature, who find 
pleasure in gardening and in all the soothing effects of 
country Hfe, or who can bring themselves to it with 
moderate pleasure for the sake of the children who 
must be encouraged to delight in it, should go out 
at least ten miles from the city. In a well-regulated 
household the early breakfast will be a natural thing, 
and the meal will be no more hurried than any other. 
It is the class which tries to be botli city and country 
that fills the columns of the magazines with the trials of 



S6 



THE COST OF SHELTER. 



the commuter. The father need not see less of nis 
children, and the common occupation and interest will 
furnish opportunities for wise counsel. Much nonsense 
is written about the perils of habit and the dangers of 
routine It all depends upon what those habits are. 
All animal functions are better performed as a matter 
of habit, without thought; it saves energy for more intel- 
lectual pursuits, which, I grant, are better kept under 
volitional control. The animal act of breakfasting at a 
given hour, of taking a given train, can be accomplished 
as unconsciously as breathing. Early rising should be 
the rule, because the children are then available as they 
are not at night. 

We shall assume that the sane man will hold the Httle 
home in the country with all outdoors to breathe in as 
worth the half-hour journey and the early breakfast, 
and that the woman will have time set free by the labor- 
saving devices sure to come as fast as she will use them 
wisely. This free time she will give to the aesthetic side' 
of Hfe and will make of her home a more attractive 
place than the club. 

But once a week let them both go into town either to 
the club or to some other place for dinner and an enter- 
tainment afterward. This will be sufficient to keep them 
out of an intellectual rut, will brighten the appetite with 
needed variety, and make the next quiet evening more 
dehghtful. 



SOCIAL ECONOMY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 57 

Once a week is sufficient to break the monotony of 
diet and routine^ and not often enough to create that 
insatiable appetite for the glare of hghts and the rush 
of people which makes all family life '^deadly dull/' as 
one cafe-haunting woman confessed. 

While this country life is the only thing for a family 
of young children and for those who really enjoy the 
country, there is a larger number needing rational housing 
which will be left behind, let us hope with more room 
because of the flitting of these others. 

Much as I deprecate the evils of the present apartment 
system, I do believe that an ideahzed modification will 
be needed for many years, especially for the elderly, for 
the commercial traveler, for the bachelor men and maids 
temporarily or permanently living single, for the newly 
married as yet unsettled in business or profession, for 
the man who does not know his own mind or whose 
employers do not know theirs. An instance has come 
to the writer's knowledge of a young man who, after 
his wedding cards were out, was ordered to take charge 
of an office in another city. 

Marrying for shelter is and should be no longer neces- 
sary ; and as for the fear that this habit of bachelor quarters 
will be hard to break up and tend to delay marriage, 
it will all depend upon whether it comes from the merelv 
animal layer of the brain or from the intellectual. 

This housing of the individual instead of the family 



58 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

has introduced an entirely new problem into house- 
building. 

Formerly when a widow or widower, a maiden aunt, 
a homeless uncle or cousin made his home with relatives, 
it was ^^as one of the family"; only the minister was 
recognized as having need for a separate sitting-room. 
The trials of this forced companionship have been told 
in many a witty story, and pathetic instances that never 
came to print are matters of common knowledge. 

Will any one dare question the fact that the sum of 
human happiness has been increased by the freedom 
given to these prisoned souls by the small independent 
apartment ? 

I have been reminded that here is no provision for 
the different generations to live together under the same 
roof; that the nineteenth century held it to be of 
great social value to have the children grow up with 
the elders. I am sorry for the twentieth-century grand- . 
parents if they are obliged to live in a flat with the 
Iwentieth-century child; some readjustment of manners 
and ideals must be made before such living will be 
comfortable, and it seems as if they are better apart 
until the new order is accepted or modified. The com- 
fort of those whose work is done and who have leisure to 
enjoy Hfe was never so easily secured as to-day. ^ To 
turn the key and take the train at an hour's notice, 
leaving no cares to follow, tends to a serene old age. 



SOCIAL ECONOMY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 59 

Moralists may squabble over the discipline of living 
with one's mother-in-law, and of the loss to the children 
of grandmother's petting, but at least physical content 
and mental satisfaction have increased. Has selfish- 
ness also ? Who shall say ? And anyway it is a part of 
the progress of the age, and what are we to do about it ? 

For one group of single persons the change has been 
only beneficial. It was a strict code of the early nineteenth 
century that a single woman should find shelter under 
the roof of some family house, however independent, 
financially, her condition. Latch-key privileges were 
denied her. Result, the boarding-house of the later 
half of the century, nominally a family home, actually 
a hotbed of faultfinding and gossip, most wearing to 
the teacher and fledgling professional woman, however 
acceptable to the milliner and seamstress. Privacy 
could not be maintained in a house built for a family of 
five made to do duty for twelve, with one bath-room, thin- 
walled bedrooms with connecting doors through which 
the light streamed when one wished to sleep, and words 
frequently came not intended for outsiders. Who that 
has experienced the two could ever think the bachelor 
apartment with its neat bath-room and doublc-doorcd 
entrance an objectionable feature in modern intellectual 
hfe? Ah! here is the key. We are to-day living a life 
of the intellect far more than ever before, and for tliat 
a certain amount of withdrawal from our fellow man is 



6o THE COST OF SHELTER. 

needed, at least a withdrawal from that portion which 
finds its interest in the affairs of others. 

But if we eHminate the house itself, and the heavy 
furniture from the ^'home" possessions, what have we 
left? The little girl was right: '^My home is where 
my dishes is." My possessions, whatever they are — the 
things I can call my own under all circumstances make 
my home. These circumstances change from time to 
time, but the ideal is there. As a concrete instance: let 
us have books, not a lot of books, but books that are 
friends with whom one may spend a comforting hour 
anywhere; books that have power to charm away the 
gloom of discontent, books to lend gayety to festal days. 

Rugs and draperies a few, those you find satisfying 
to your sense of color, of design, and with which you 
feel at home. Ugly tables, chairs, and ''sofas'' disappear 
under an Indian shawl. A Persian or a Navajo blanket 
covers a multitude of aesthetic sins. Only let these 
harmonize with each other, let them be chosen once for 
all to go in company; then if they are distributed, it will 
not matter; but in any case avoid the ''museum'' look 
given by mere collecting. Alas! these are expensive 
articles, and the young people may not be able to get all 
at once. Let society then turn over a new leaf in the^ 
wedding-present line, and cease this senseless giving of 
cut-glass and silver to those who may go to a mining- 
camp in the Rockies or to Mexico, or even into a ten-by- 



3 



SOCIAL ECONOMY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 6l 

twelve New York apartment. Let there be a committee 
— ^we are so fond of committees — to receive contributions 
in a money-bank or in sealed envelopes, and then when 
all is collected, let this committee scour the shops for 
articles of value, and when found consult the bridal pair 
as to their preferences. The choice may be made of one 
or more, as the money permits. The particular gift 
will still be a surprise and yet of permanent value. Lace 
and embroideries are always good, but let the waste 
of money on the ^'latest" in orange-knives, oyster-plates, 
go up higher, that is, to the class with money for conspicu- 
ous waste, if it must still exist, but let sensible people be 
sensible, and not require the young folks to hve up to 
their hopes for future advancement. Wedding gifts are 
meant to be kindly help to a young housewife, not a burden 
which drags her down to the level of a drudge. But if 
the house is surely their own, and in the country, there 
will be shelves to fill and walls to cover; then is the oppor- 
tunity for individual gifts of china, glass, and pictures. 
To make the best of the increasing tendency to a 
semi-country living, there is need for students of domestic 
architecture, women with a trained taste added to an 
experience in doing things, not merely seeing them al- 
ready done. Let these evolve beautiful exteriors, with 
interiors so finely proportioned that they will be a delight 
to all beholders, so adapted to their purposes that no one 
will wish to change them. There is a right dimension, 



62 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

in relation to other dimensions, which is always satis- 
fying and independent of furniture or decoration. 

The ugly houses, ill adapted to any useful purpose, 
which line the roadside bear witness to the ignorance of 
the women of to-day. The effort for mere decoration, 
for pretentious show, is so evident that one wishes for an 
earthquake to swallow them all. 

Another cause for rise in rent demanded for a given 
space is the heavy tax borne by real estate for pubhc 
improvement, for good lighting, clean streets, plentiful 
water, sufficient sewerage, free baths, parks, and schools. 
Again, this falls heaviest on our three- to five -thousand 
dollar class, who pay more than their share, especially 
when the milHonaire shirks his duty by paying his taxes 
elsewhere. What can the man with Umited income do 
but avoid the responsibihty of a family ? Has he a moral 
right to bring unhappiness to his wife and two children ? 
Having been caught in the trap, why give him all the 
blame if he tries to increase his income by speculation ? 

The more one studies this question of shelter for the 
salaried group, the more is one convinced that it lies at 
the root of our social discontent and is a large factor in 
our moral as well as physical deterioration. 



CHAPTER V. 

POSSIBILITIES IN SIGHT PROVIDED THE HOUSEWIFE 
IS PROGRESSIVE. 

"We are far from the noon of man: 
There is time for the race to grow." — Tennyson. 

" There appears no limit to the invasion of hfe by the machine." 

H. G. Wells. 

The house as a centre of ma^nufacturing industry has 
passed (for even if village industries do spring up, the 
work-rooms will be separate from the living-rooms); 
the house as a sign of pecuniary standing is passing: 
what next ? Why, of course, the house as the promoter 
of ^^the effective life." Rebel as the artistic individual 
may at this word, it expresses the spirit of the twentieth 
century as nothing else can. Social advance must be 
made along the Hne of efficiency, even if it lead to some- 
thing different and not at first sight better. The appeal 
to self-interest is soonest answered. The man or woman 
with any ambition will keep clean, will buy better milk for 
the baby, will pay more for rent if he or she is convinced 
that it will bring in or save money in the end, because 
money has been the measure of success in the nineteenth 
century. But as the full significance of this ^^machine- 
made'' age is grasped it will be seen that it has set free 

63 



64 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

the human laborer, if only he will qualify himself to use 
the power at his hand. The house will become the 
first lesson in the use of mechanical appliances, in control 
of the harnessed forces of nature, and of that spirit of 
cooperation which alone can bring the benefits of modem 
science to the doors of all. One family cannot as a rule put 
up in a city or in the suburbs — and half the world fives in 
cities — its own idea of a house without undue expenditure; 
but ten families may combine and secure a building 
which fairly suits them all. I say fairly, because all 
cooperation means some sacrifice of whim or special Hk- 
ing. The well-balanced individual will, however, choose 
the plan yielding on the whole the greater efficiency, 
thus following a law of natural selection which, so far, 
the human race has ignored — a neglect which has been 
carrying him toward destruction as surely as there is 
law in nature. Is this neglect to go on, or is man to turn 
before it is too late to a cultivation of the effective fife ? - 
In everything else he has advanced, but in his intimate 
personal relations with nature and natural force he has 
acted as if he believed himself not only lord of the beasts 
of the field, but of the very laws of nature without under- 
standing them. Mechanical progress has come from 
an humble attitude toward the powers of wind and^ 
water. Home efficiency will arrive just as soon as the 
home-keeper will put herself in a receptive frame of 
mind and be prepared to learn her Hmitations and the 



POSSIBILITIES IN SIGHT. 65 

extent of her control of material things. When she will 
stop saying "I do not believe" and set herself to learn 
patiently the facts in the case, then will housekeeping 
take on a new phase and the house become the nursery 
of effective workers who will at the same time enjoy 
life. To manage this machine-driven house will require 
deHcate handling; but let women once overcome their 
fear of machinery and they will use it with skill. 

The undue influence of sentiment retards all domestic 
progress. Because our grandfather's idea of perfect 
happiness was to sit before the fire of logs, we are satisfied 
with the semblance in the form of the asbestos-covered 
gas-log. ''It is not for the iconoclastic inventor or 
architect to improve the hearth out of existence." Senti- 
ment is a useful emotion, but when it held open funerals 
of diphtheria victims, society stepped in and forbade. 
With a certain advance in social consciousness public 
opinion will step in and regulate sentiment in regard to 
many things depending on individual whim. 

Heating might now be accomplished without dust and 
ashes, without the destructive effects of steam, if enough 
houses would take electricity to enable a company to 
supply it in the form of a sort of dado carrying wires 
safely embedded in a non-conducting substance, or in 
the form of a carpet threaded with conducting wire. 
Both heating and cooling apparatus could be installed 
in the shape of a motor to replace the punkah man and 



66 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

the present buzz-wheel fan, and to give fresh air without 
the opening of windows which leads to half our house- 
keeping miseries. O woman, how can you resist the 
thought of a clean, cool house, sans dust, sans flies and 
mosquitoes, sans the intolerable street-noise, with abun- 
dance of fresh filtered air at the desired temperature! 
It is all ready at your hand. A windmill on the roof can 
store power, or a solar motor can save the sun's rays, 
or capsules of compressed air may be had to run the 
machine, if only you were not so afraid of the very word 
machine that no man dares propose it to you. Of what 
use is all the invention of the time if it cannot save the 
lives of the children, half of whom fall victims to house 
diseases, if it cannot sweep away consumption and 
influenza and all the kindred diseases arising from over- 
shelter and under-cleanliness of that shelter (lack of air). 
Both men and women are sentimental and non-progres- 
sive, but education is assumed to make wiser human 
beings. Women are said to be monopolizing the educa- 
tion; is it making them more amenable to reasonableness 
and less under the control of unprogressive conservatism ? 
It does require quick adaptation to keep up with the 
possibilities of invention, but should we not aim at that 
which will advance our race on a par with its oppor- 
tunities ? Every other department is getting ahead^ of 
us. We should hang our heads in shame that we have 
neglected so long the means for saner living. 



n> ^ 




POSSIBILITIES IN SIGHT. 7 1 

It has been said that the highest modem civihzation 
is shown not so much by costly monuments and works 
of art as by the perfection of house conveniences. Where 
then do we stand? And in what direction are we to 
look for the coming advance? We have had some sixty 
years of pubhc sanitation; we have secured a supply of 
sanitary experts to whom all questions affecting the 
physical welfare of masses of people may be referred. 
We have a few architects who know the requirements 
of a livable house, not merely one which shows off well as 
first built. 

We need sixty years of private-house sanitation. We 
need to educate house experts, home advisers, those who 
know how to examine a house not only while it is empty 
but while it is throbbing with the Ufe of the family. 
This adviser must be, for many years at least, able to 
suggest practical methods of overcoming structural de- 
fects (more difficult than fresh construction), as well as 
of modifying personal prejudices. 

These house experts will, I think, be women of the 
broadest education, scientific and social. They will 
have not only a certain amount of medical knowledge, 
but also the tact and enthusiasm of the missionary which 
will bring them as friends and benefactors to the despair- 
ing mother and the discouraged householder. 

That there is a beginning of this demand, I can testify ; 
that it will grow, I bcUeve As soon as a group of trained 



72 



THE COST OF SHELTER. 



women are ready, they will find occupation if the advance 
in housing conditions which I foresee is to become a 
reality. 

Within the last two or three years the author has re- 
ceived requests from all over the country for suggestions 
as to kitchen design and construction. 

The two illustrations here given show one Httle step 
in the right direction. The cuts represent a remodelled 
kitchen in Providence, R. I. 

The floor is of lignolith laid down in one sheet and 
carried up as a wainscoting so that no crevice exists for 
entrance of insects or dust. Such floors are yet in their 
infancy and need suitable preparation for laying, just 
as macadamized streets fail if the foundation is faulty. 
The idea is all that we are here concerned with. One 
of the features to be especially noted is the use of glass 
for shelves. Why should the hospital monopolize the 
materials for antiseptic work? When it is understood 
how much hospital work is caused because of dirt in 
the preparation and keeping of food, the kitchen will 
receive its share of attention. 

To-day the cost of shelter is about one third for the 
house and two thirds for the expense of running it, 
largely due to dirt and its consequences. Mr. Wells 
wisely says: "Most dusting and sweeping would be quite 
avoidable if houses were wiselier done.'' 

When the real twentieth-century house is put up 



POSSIBILITIES IN SIGHT. 73 

our young engineer and college instructor will be willing to 
pay $400 to $500 rent, because wages and running expenses 
will be $100 less and the company owning the houses 
will not expect more than 4%, largely because repairs 
will be less and permanence of tenure more assured. 
The old type of wooden house used by the old type of 
tenant could not be expected to last more than a few 
years, which justified a higher rate of interest. For the 
tenement tenant of the better class twenty years has been 
the estimate, so that the cost of building could not be 
distributed over fifty years as it should be. 

The house will be made of reinforced concrete or its 
successor; certainly not of wood. Whether a single 
house or one of two or more '^compartments, " each family 
will have a side, that is, the entrance doors will not be 
side by side. Such have been built in Somerville, Mass., 
by a railroad company for its employees. Those who 
wish to have a garden may; but no one will be obliged, 
for there will be regulations about the general appearance 
of the whole park, and every man his own lawn-mower 
will not be true. The cultivation of taste will have so 
far advanced that the grouping advised by the landscape 
architect will appeal to the occupant more than his own 
fancied arrangement. 

Since the heating will be supplied from outside, there 
will be a hothouse and cold-frames for those who wish 
to have a share in the garden, just as now there are bins 



74 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

in the basement. The care of these may replace the exer- 
cise now gained in scrubbing the front steps. The windows 
of the house will be dust-proof, fly-, mosquito-, and moth- 
proof; the air supplied will be strained by galleries of 
screens, if indeed social advance has not eliminated soot 
from chimneys and grit from the streets. Most certainly 
dirt will not be permitted to come in on shoes and long 
dresses. Warmed or cooled, moistened or dried air will 
be circulated as needed. In such a house rugs may 
stay undisturbed for a month or more, books for years, 
and the dust-cloth be rarely in evidence; the redding 
will consist of putting back in place the things used; 
but as each member of the family will do this as soon 
as he is old enough, there will be but a few minutes' work. 
The breakfast will be of uncooked or simply heated 
food, parched grains and cream, fruit fresh or dried, and 
nuts. If coffee or cocoa is desired, the electric heater 
serves it to the requisite degree of heat. Each adult 
member of the family will probably take this in his own 
room or at his own convenience, without the formahty of 
a meal. The few glasses and other dishes may be plunged 
into a tank of water and left for future cleaning. 
Luncheon will depend altogether on the habits of the 
family, but dinner, at whatever hour that may be, will 
be the family symposium. Dressed in its honor, witb a 
sprightly addition to the conversation of experience or 
information or conjecture, there will be form and cere- 



POSSIBILITIES IN SIGHT. 75 

mony of a simple, refined kind, such that once again 
the family may welcome a guest without anxiety. Good 
conversation and fresh interests will thus come into 
the children's lives. How much they have missed in 
these days of the barring out all hospitality! Is it per- 
chance one reason, if not the chief, why manners have 
degenerated ? 

This meal wall not have more than four courses of 
food carefully selected and perfectly cooked, whether in 
the house or out matters not so it is served fresh and of 
just the right temperature. No kind of cooking will be 
permitted which ''meets the guest in the hall and stays 
with him in the street"; therefore the dishes may be 
washed by neatly dressed maids or by the children, who 
thus learn to care for the fitness of things; plenty of 
towels and hot water, with all hands doing a little, leaves 
everything snug and no one too tired. We will let 
Mr. H. G. Wells describe the bedroom of the future 
house : * 

''The room is, of course, very clear and clean and 
simple : not by any means cheaply equipped, but designed 
to economize the labor of redding and repair just as 
much as possible. 

"It is beautifully proportioned and rather lower than 
most rooms I know on earth. There is no fireplace, 
and I am perplexed by that until I find a thermometer 

* A Modern Utopia, p. 103. 



76 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

beside six switches on the wall. Above this switch- 
board is a brief instruction: one switch warms the floor, 
which is not carpeted, but covered by a substance like 
soft oilcloth; one warms the mattress (which is of metal 
with resistance coils threaded to and fro in it); and the 
others warm the wall in various degrees, each directing 
current through a separate system of resistances. The 
casement does not open, but above, flush with the ceiling, 
a noiseless rapid fan pumps air out of the room. The 
air enters by a Tobin shaft. 

"There is a recess dressing-room, equipped with a 
bath and all that is necessary to one's toilet; and the 
water, one remarks, is warmed, if one desires it warm, 
by passing it through an electrically-heated spiral of 
tubing. A cake of soap drops out of a store-machine 
on the turn of a handle, and when you have done with 
it, you drop that and your soiled towels, etc., which are 
also given you by machines, into a little box, through 
the bottom of which they drop at once and sail down 
a smooth shaft. [Better stay in the box and not infect 
the shaft. — Author.] 

"A little notice tells you the price of the room, and 
you gather the price is doubled if you do not leave the 
toilet as you find it. Beside the bed, and to be lit at 
night by a handy switch over the pillow, is a little clock, 
its face flush with the wall [no dust-catcher]. 

*'The room has no comers to gather dirt, wall mqets 



POSSIBILITIES IN SIGHT. 77 

floor With a gentle curve, and the apartment could be 
swept out effectually by a few strokes of a mechanical 
sweeper [sucked out by the now-used cleaning- machine. — 
Author]. The door-frames and window-frames are of 
metal, rounded and impervious to draft. You are 
politely requested to turn a handle at the foot of your 
bed before leaving the room, and forthwith the frame 
turns up into a vertical position, and the bedclothes 
hang airing. You stand in the doorway and reaHze 
that there remains not a minute's work for any one to 
do. Memories of the fetid disorder of many an earthly 
bedroom after a night's use float across your mind. 

[In America the use of the sleeping- room as a sitting- 
room is more common than in England, and the fetid dis- 
order is far greater.] 

**And you must not imagine this dustless, spotless, 
sweet apartment as anything but beautiful. Its appear- 
ance is a little unfamiliar, of course, but all the muddle 
of dust-collecting hangings and witless ornament that 
cover the earthly bedroom, the valances, the curtains 
to check the draft from the ill-fitting windows, the worth- 
less irrelevant pictures, usually a little askew, the dusty 
carpets, and all the paraphemaHa about the dirty black- 
leaded fireplace are gone. The faintly tinted walls are 
framed with just one clear colored line, as finely placed 
as the member of a Greek capital; the door-handles 
and the Hnes of the panels of the door, the two chairs, 



78 



THE COST OF SHELTER. 



the framework of the bed, the writing-table, have all 
that exquisite finish of contour that is begotten of sus- 
tained artistic effort. The graciously shaped windows 
each frame a picture — since they are draughtless the 
window-seats are no mere mockeries as are the window- 
seats of earth — and on the sill the sole thing to need 
attention in the room is one Httle bowl of blue Alpine 
flowers." 

The true office of the house is not only to be useful, 
but to be aesthetically a background for the dwellers 
therein, subordinate to them, not obtrusive. In most 
of our modem building and furnishing the people are 
relegated to the background as insignificant figures. 
This is largely why the home feeling is absent, why 
children do not form an affection for the rooms they 
live in. 

Let there be nothing in the room because some other 
person has it; this shows poverty of ideas. Let there 
be nothing in the room which does not satisfy some 
need, spiritual or physical, of some member of the family. 
How bare our rooms would become! Let the skeptical 
reader try an experiment. Take everything out of a 
given room, then bring back one by one the things one 
feels essential not merely because it fills space but for 
the presence of which some one can give a good and 
sufficient reason. It will mean a trial of a few days, 
because it is not easy to separate habit from need. A 



POSSIBILITIES IN SIGHT. 79 

table has stood in a certain spot: that is no reason in 
itself why it should continue to stand there unless it 
supplies a need. 

If a fetish stands m the way of social progress, do 
away with it. If the idea of home as the shell is standing 
in the way of developing the idea of home as a state of 
mind, then let us cast loose the load of things that are 
sinking us in the sea of care beyond rescue. 

It is quite possible that we may return to that state 
of mind in which there was a pleasure in caring for 
beautiful objects. The housewife of colonial days did 
not disdain the washing of her cups of precious china 
or doing up the heirlooms of lace and embroidery. 
When our possessions acquire an intrinsic value, when 
all the work of the house which cannot be done by 
machinery is that of handling beautiful things and has a 
meaning in the life of the individual and the family, 
service will not be required in the vast majority of homes : 
then we may approach to the Utopian ideal of the nobility 
of labor. 

'*The plain message that physcial science has for the 
world at large is this, that were our political and social 
and moral devices only as well contrived to their ends 
as a linotype machine; an antiseptic operating-plant, or an 
electric tram-car, there need now, at the present moment, 
be no appreciable toil in the world, and only the smallest 
fraction of the pain, the fear, and the anxiety that now 



8o THE COST OF SHELTER. 

make human life so doubtful in its value. There is 
more than enough for every one alive. Science stands 
as a too competent servant behind her wrangling, under- 
bred masters, holding out resources, devices, and remedies 
they are too stupid to use." * 

*H. G.Wells. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE COST PER PERSON AND PER FAMILY OF 
VARIOUS GRADES OF SHELTER. 

*'The strongest needs conquer." 

An outlay of $1500 to $2500 will secure a cottage in 
the country, or a tenement with five or six rooms in the 
suburbs, for a wage-earner's family. The rent for this 
should be from $125 to $200 per year, but, as in the case of 
the model tenements in New York, a minimum of sanitary 
appliances and of labor-saving devices is found in such 
dweUings. They are adapted to a family Ufe of mutual 
helpfulness and forbearance. 

The lack of this kind of housing has been a disgrace 
to our so-called civilization. Public attention has, how- 
ever, been directed to the need, and it is gratifying to 
find in the report of the U. S. Bureau of Labor, Bulletin 
54, Sept. 1904, a full account, with photographs and plans, 
of the work of sixteen large manufacturing establishments 
in housing their employees. 

Euthenics, the art of better living, is being recognized 

as of money value in the case of the wage-earning class, 

but the wave of social betterment has not yet lifted the 

81 



82 



THE COST OF SHELTER. 



salaried class to the point of cooperation for their own 
elevation. They are obliged to put up with the better 
grade of workmen's dwellings, or to pay beyond their 
means for a poor quality of the house designed for the 
leisure class. In either case, the weight bears hardest 
on the woman's shoulders, and it is to her awakening 
that we must look for an impetus toward an understanding 
of the problems confronting us. 

The college-educated women of the country believe 
so fully that the twentieth century will develop a civiU- 
zation in which brain-power and good taste will outrank 
mere lavish display, that they have sent out a call to their 
associations to devise methods of sane and wholesome 
living which shall leave time and energy free for intellec- 
tual pleasure — some, at least, of that time now absorbed 
by the house and its demands as insignia of social rank. 

Trained and thoughtful women are convinced that the 
first step in social redemption is adequate and adaptable 
shelter for the family. Just so long as tradition and 
thoughtlessness bind the wife and moth^ to that form 
of housekeeping which taxes all the forces of man to 
supply money and of women to spend it, so long will the 
most intelligent women decline to sacrifice themselves for 
so little return. 

The constructive arts dealing with wood, stone, and 
metal have been conceded to be man's province. He 
has used new materials and labor-saving devices in rail- 



THE COST PER PERSON AND PER FAMILY. 83 

way stations and place of amusements, not selfishly, but 
because of the appreciation of the travelling pubHc. It 
is the fashion to decry labor-saving devices in the house, 
because they do away with that sign of pecuniary abiUty, 
the capped and aproned maid. The obvious saving of 
steps by the speaking-tube and telephone-call is frowned 
upon for the same reason. It is this attitude of society 
which stands in the way of the adoption of those mechanical 
helps which might do away with nearly all the drudgery 
and dirty heavy work of the house. 

The new epoch * ^4s more and more replacing muscle- 
power fed on wheat at eighty cents a bushel, by machine- 
power fed on coal at five cents a bushel,^' thus liberating 
man from hard and deadening toil. As his mental activ- 
ity increases his needs in the way of the comJorts and 
decencies of refined living increase. More sanitary 
appHances are demanded, more expense for fundamental 
cleanliness is incurred, and for that tidiness and trimness 
of aspect inside and outside the house which adds both 
to the labor and to the cost of living, especially in old- 
style houses. 

While we can but applaud this desire, we must confess 
that the new building laws, the increased cost of land, and 
the higher wages of workmen have raised the cost of 
shelter for human efficiency to double or treble that of 

* The New Epoch. Geo. S. Morison. 



84 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

the so-called workman's cottage. A fair rule is that 
each room costs $1000 to $2000 to build. 

This means that our lowest limit of income, $1000 a 
year wdth $200 for rent, can have only two or at most 
three rooms and bath, and those without elevators and jani- 
tor service. It is only when the income reaches $2000 to 
$3000 a year that the family may have the advantage 
of good building in a good locality, and even then it 
means some sacrifice in other directions. It is clear 
that the common theory that a young man must have a 
salary of $3000 a year before he dares to marry has some 
foundation when $600 to $800 is demanded for rent. 

The increased sanitary requirements have doubled 
the cost of a given enclosed space, the finish and fittings 
now found in the best houses have doubled this again, so 
that it is quite within bounds to say that a house which 
might have been put up to meet the needs of the day in 
1850 for, say, $5000 will now cost $20,000. 

Much of the increase is for real comfort and advance 
in decent living, and so far it is to be commended. Such 
part of the increase as is for ostentation, for show and 
sham, is to be frowned upon, for this high cost of shelter is 
to-day the greatest menace to the social welfare of the 
community. When the average young man finds it 
impossible to support a family, when the professional man 
finds it necessary to supplement his chosen work by pot- 
boiling, by public lectures and any outside work which 



THE COST PER PERSON AND PER FAMILY. 85 

will bring in money, what wonder that scholarship is not 
thriving in America? Pitiful tales of such stifling of 
effort have come to my ears, and have in large part led 
me to make a plea for a scientific study of the living 
conditions of this class, and for a readjustment of ideals 
to the absolute facts of the situation. 

We may give sympathy to those Italians who pay only 
$2 a month for the shelter of the whole family, but 
we must give help to the harder case of a family with 
refined tastes and high ideals who can pay only $200 a 
year. 

In the real country, at a distance from the railroad, 
air, water, and soil are cheap. Here a house may be 
put up with its own windmill or gas-engine to pump 
water, with its own drainage system, giving all the sanitary 
comforts of the city house, for about $5000. The same 
inside comforts in one quarter the space, minus the 
isolation and garden, may be had in a suburban block 
for one half that sum. This is probably the least expen- 
sive shelter to-day for the family whose duties require 
one or more members of it to be in the city daily, for, 
as the centre of the city is approached, land rent increases, 
so that dwelling space must be again curtailed one half 
or rent doubled. The majority take half a house or go 
into the city and put up with one quarter the space. 

The curtailment of space in which families live is 
going on at an alarming rate, although not yet seriously 



86 



THE COST OF SHELTER. 




THE COST PER PERSON AND PER FAMILY. 



87 





»Tl 








(W 




W 




^ 









P 




!3 




O- 




M 




M 
*| 




i 






















t-h» 


« 1 





0' 


.« 


w 

^ 


g 


v; 


?;? 


13 




9? 


{-• 










H 


p 


p 


p 


vj 


^ 





^ 


•-» 




( ) 







ti) 








p 


n 


r^ 


n> 


r^ 


P 


B 


i-t 


^ 


P 




T) 


a> 


a 


> 




B 


H-t 


Vi 





2. 


1 


n 
P 


^-^ 


^ 














(/J 













P 




^ 




c^ 


















46'0^ 




5b THE COST OF SHELTER. 

taken into account by the sociologist for the group we 
are studying. 

This crowding is causing the refinements of hfe to be 
disregarded, is depriving the children of their rights, 
and doing them almost more harm than comes to the 
tenement dwellers, for they have the parks to play in 
and are not kept within doors. 

Mr. Michael Lane in his '^ Level of Social Motion" 
claims that present tendencies are leading to a level of $2000 
a year and a family of two children as an average. Mr. 
Wells claims as a tendency in living conditions the prac- 
tically automatic and servantless household. In con- 
nection with the Mary Lowell Stone Home Economics 
Exhibit a design of an approach to this kind of a dwell- 
ing was asked for in sketch. The accompanying plans 
were made by a firm who have had not only experience 
in this kind of domestic building, but who have sympathy 
with and personal knowledge of similar conditions in 
widely separated parts of the country. 

These sketches are not of an ideal house and not for 
a given plot of land, but only a hint of what Mrs. Michael 
Lane "must expect if she attempts to build in the country 
or suburbs." 

Since these were drawn many changes have come about 
in costs and in materials available. The architects 
expressly disclaim the word "model" in relation to 
them. Mrs. Lane and her two children will do their 



THE COST PER PERSON AND PER FAMILY. 89 

own v/ork, and therefore steps and stairs must be few, 
and yet they wish light and air and cleanliness. 

The author hopes that her readers will make a study 
of house-plans, not the cheap ones, but those that will 
bear the test of time and living in. 

The increased cost of shelter should mean both more 
comfort and greater beauty. If it does not, something 
is wrong with society. 

It appears from all that has been gathered that single 
houses for a family of five will cost about $5000 to 
$10,000 for some years to come; that these houses should 
be so constructed and cared for as to rent for $300 to 
$400 if the occupant is to keep the grounds in order, 
to use the house with care, and furnish heat and light. 

The question of return on capital invested and of 
care of exteriors and grounds must be studied most care- 
fully in the Hght of the new conditions, and a new set 
of conventions devised by society to meet the various 
circumstances arising out of them. 

This suburban living is the vital point to be attacked, 
because in cities the matter is already pretty well settled; 
there is in sight nothing that will greatly change the rule 
already given, a cost of $1000 per room of about 1200 cubic 
feet, with the finish and sanitary apphances demanded. 

Our family of five must pay for rent $500 to $800 for 
the smallest quarters they can compress themselves into. 
Subtracting the cost of heat and light and the car-fares, 



90 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

this may be no more expensive than the suburban house 
at $300 or $400, hut the diflference comes in light and 
air. The upper floors of an isolated skyscraper give 
more than a country house, but at the expense of other 
houses in the darkened street. 

In the city the question is then not so much one of 
cost of construction as of a fair arrangement of streets 
and parks, so as to avoid the loss of Ught and air for 
living-places. The single individual may find shelter of 
a safe and refined sort in all respects except air for $200 
to $300 a year in the newer apartment-houses, and two 
friends to share it may halve this sum. A great need is 
for as good rooms to be furnished in the suburbs where 
more light and air may be had. 

The content of the country house costing $5000 to 
$10,000 will be approximately 50,000 to 70,000 cubic 
feet, or 10,000 for a person. The suburban block will 
furnish about 12,000 to 20,000 for the family, while the 
city apartment of six so-called rooms renting for from 
$400 to $500 a year shrinks to 6000 to 8000 cubic feet, 
giving only one tenth the air-space the country house 
affords, as well as far less outside air and sunshine. 
The best city tenements cost $1 a week for 600 cubic 
feet air-space. What wonder that the sanitarian is 
aghast at the prospect! 

According to the President of the Enghsh Sanitary In- 
spectors* Association it seems probable that if the nine- 



THE COST PER PERSON AND PER FAMILY. 9 1 

teenth-century city continues to drain the country of its 
potentially intellectual class and to squeeze them into 
smaller and smaller quarters, it will dry up the reservoirs 
of strength in the population (address, Aug. i8, 1905). 

The houses of the Morris Building Co., illustrated 
in Chapter II, show what may be done. These houses 
rent for $35 to $45 a month with constant heat and 
hot water, so that the heavy work is reduced to a mini- 
mum; but the exigencies of family life are illustrated in 
the fact of the almost universal demand of the tenants for 
continuous heat and hot water night as well as day. The 
ordinary childless apartment house banks its fires at 
night. A supplementary apparatus would mean work by 
the tenants, however. This is a good example of the 
balance which must be struck in all new plans until they 
are tested. 

The change in what one gains under the name of 
shelter, what one pays rent for, must be kept clearly in 
mind. Two or three decades since it was a tight roof, 
thinly plastered walls, and a chimney with "thimble- 
holes for stoves," possibly a furnace with small tin flues, 
a well or cistern, or perhaps one faucet dehvering a small 
stream of water. To-day even in the suburbs there is 
furnished light, heat, abundant water, care of halls and 
sidewalks. The elevator-boy takes the place of " buttons,'' 
the engineer and janitor rcHeve the man of the house of 
care, so that it may not be so extravagant as it sounds 



92 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

to give one third the $3000 income for rent, since it 
stops that leaky sieve, that bottomless bag of "operating 
expenses." The income may be pretty definitely esti- 
mated in this case, especially if meals are taken in the 
caf^. If the family dine as it happens, the cost moimts 
up. Here are a few estimates for verification and criti- 
cism: 

Rent of an apartment $600.00 to $700.00 

Meals 1200.00 '^ 1000.00 

Clothing 400.00 " 600.00 

Incidentals, amusements, etc 200.00 *' 300.00 

Savings, nil. 

Total income $2400.00 to $2600.00 



If the wife can manage the ''kitchenette" and part of 
the clothing, about $600 may be saved, but in that case it 
represents her earnings, and should be at her disposal. 
If it should be possible for safe shelter to be had for $400, 
then with the wife's help $700 should be the sum in the 
''region of choice." I hold that, unless the income can 
be managed so as to secure choice, all the daily toil is 
embittered. Even if some is spent fooHshly, it is safer 
than the burden "just not enough." 

The more common cost of decent living in our Eastern 
cities is : 



THE COST PER PERSON AND PER FAMILY. 93 

Rent $1000 to $1500 

Meals 1200 '^ 1400 

Clothing 500 '^ 700 

Incidentals 300 '^ 600 

Savings, nil. 

Total $3000 to $4000 

This goes far toward justifying the saying that a young 
man cannot afford to marry on less than $3000 a year. 

With these figures in mind, what can our $2000 family 
with two children do? The rent that they can pay 
will not cover service or heat. There must be a maid to 
fill the lamps, see to the furnace, help with the cooking, 
and the wife must stay by the house pretty closely and 
probably decHne most invitations. For the five persons, 
ten dollars a week for raw-food materials and five for 
its preparation is the lowest limit likely to be cheerfully 
submitted to. 

Rent, heat, light, etc $400 

Food 800 

Clothing hardly less than 400 

Children's education, even with free 
schools, and their illnesses will use up. 100 

Car-fares, church, etc 100 

Wages and sundries 200 

Total $2000 

In the bank nothing. 



94 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

But what shelter can this refined, intelHgent family 
find to-day for $400? Certainly nothing with modem 
conveniences. The lack of these is made up by women's 
work — hard, rough work. And that is the crux of the 
servant problem to-day. It is the reason why more 
famiUes do not go into the country to Uve. The work 
required in an old house to bring living up to modem 
standards is too appaUing to be undertaken lightly. 

In England the Sunlight Park and other plans, in 
America the Dayton and Cincinnati schemes, are samples 
of what is being done for the $500 to $800 family, but where 
are the examples (outside the Morris houses) for the sal- 
aried class for whom we are pleading ? The great army 
of would-be home-makers are forced into a nomadic life 
by the exigencies resulting from the great combines — a 
shifting of offices, a closing of factories, a breaking up of 
hundreds of homes. I beUeve this to be the chiej factor 
in the decline of the American home — a hundred-fold 
more potent than the college education of women. 

The unthinking comment on this rise in the cost of 
shelter is usually condemnation of greedy landlords and 
soulless capitaHsts; but is that the whole story? 

In the present order of things it seems to be inevitable 
that the gain of one class in the community is loss to 
another. Probably the law has always existed, and only 
the very rapid and sudden changes bring it into promi- 
nence, because of the swift readjustment needed, an 



THE COST PER PERSON AND PER FAMILY. 95 

operation which torpid human nature resents when 
consciously pressed. 

For instance, the efforts of the philanthropist and 
working man together have succeeded in shortening 
hours of labor and increasing wages — ^without, alas! 
increasing the speed or quality of the work done, 
especially in the trades which have to do with materials 
of construction, so that house-building has about doubled 
in cost within twenty-five years, largely due to cost of 
labor. This increased cost has fallen heavily on the 
very group of people least able to bear it, the skilled 
artisan, the teacher, and the young salaried man. Again 
I call attention to the need of a philanthropist who 
shall raise his eyes to that group, the hope of our democ- 
racy, those whom he has held to be able to help them- 
selves — and given time would do so; but time is the very 
thing denied them in this motor age. Help to make 
quick adjustment must come to the rescue of those to 
whom time more than equals money. 

One used to wait patiently for seed-sown lawns to be- 
come velvety turf. Money can bring sod from afar and 
in a season give the results of years. So the housing of 
the $2000 family can be accompUshed just as soon as 
it seems sufficiently desirable. It needs a research 
just as truly as the cancer problem or desert botany, and 
affects thousands more. 

One other cause of increased cost in construction 



96 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

and operation which does, if wisely carried out, increase 
health and efficiency is the sanitary provision of our 
recent building laws. 

The instalment of these sanitary appliances becomes 
increasingly costly because of the rise in wages of the 
workmen, plumbers, masons, etc. The careful statistics 
of the Bureau of Labor show conclusively that all build- 
ing trades have decreased hours of labor and increased 
wages per hour, so that cost of construction has doubled, 
and the sanitary requirements have again doubled the 
cost, so that it is easy to see why the family with a station- 
ary income has quartered its dwelHng-space. 

The end is not yet: the new devices mentioned in 
previous chapters will at first increase cost of construc- 
tion. 

From lack of business training the public is at fault 
in estimating relative costs. A well-built '^automatic 
house" costs too much, they say. Yes, but what does it 
save? Cost looms large, saving seems small. More- 
over, the value of mental serenity, of that peace of mind 
consequent on the smooth running of the domestic machine, 
is undervalued. The American child such as he is is 
largely the product of the American house and its ill 
adapted construction. I must reiterate my belief that 
the modification of the house itself to the Hfe the 
twentieth century is calhng for is the first step in social 
reform. 



CHAPTER Vn. 

THE RELATION BETWEEN COST OF HOUSING AND 
TOTAL INCOME. 

"It must be made possible to live within one's income.'* 

The thrifty French rule is one fifth for rent. In 
towns where land is cheap and wood abundant, or in 
college communities exempt from taxes, comfortable 
housing is found in this country for as Httle as fifteen 
or eighteen per cent of the total income. In some mining 
towns where all prospects are uncertain and the house 
has no particular social significance the rent may be 
even lower, although it is often very high. It depends 
on the demand, on competition rather than quality. In 
our older and more settled communities it is most com- 
mon for rent to use up one fourth the salary of all town 
dwellers with incomes within our limits. This was true 
in Boston fifty years ago, and it is true to-day in dozens 
of cities and towns personally investigated. It is not 
unknown that a teacher or business man should exceed 

97 



qS the cost of shelter. 

this in the hope of a rise in salary by the second year. 
Adding the expenses of operating the house, of repairs 
and additions and improvements if the house is owned, 
nearly half the money available must go for the mere 
housing of the family. 

If it is true, as I beUeve it is, that for each fraction 
over one fifth spent for rent a saving must be made 
in some other direction — in the daily expense, less service, 
less costly food, or less expensive clothing, or, last to be 
cut down, less of the real pleasure of Kfe, — it will be seen 
what a far-reaching question this is, how it touches the 
vital point, to have or not to have other good things in 
Ufe. 

A large part of the increase is due, as we have said, to 
increased demand for sanitary conveniences, but far 
more potent is the pressure resulting from the price of 
land. 

This pressure has led to the building of smaller and 
smaller apartments, so that four and six rooms are made 
out of floor-space sufficient for two. It sounds better 
to say we have a six-room flat, even though there is no 
more privacy than in two rooms, for the rooms are mere 
cells unless the doors are always open. It is not uncom- 
mon in such suites renting for $50 to $60 per month for 
six rooms, to find three of them with only one window 
on one side, with no chance for cross-ventilation unless 
the doors of the whole suite are open. 



COST OF HOUSING AND TOTAL INCOME. 99 

This style of building prevails even in the suburbs 
where air and sunshine should be free. The would- 
be renter looking at such suites with all the doors open 
and the rooms innocent of fried fish and bacon does not 
think of the place as it will he under living conditions 
when privacy can be had only by smothering. 

The model tenements in New York rent for one dollar 
per week per room; the better houses for double, or 
two dollars for 450 cubic feet. Many of those I have 
examined renting for forty to sixty dollars per month 
give no more space for the money, only a little better 
finish — marble and tile in the bath-room, for instance. 

The three-room tenement does, however, shelter as 
many persons as the six-room flat, hence there is more 
real overcrowding. In all these grades of shelter it 
is fresh air that is wanting. What wonder the white 
plague is always with us? What remedy so long as 
millions sleep in closets with no air-currents passing 
through? 

Accepting the French rule, the artisan who rents the 
model tenement at $3.50 per week should earn $3 a 
day wage for six days. If he earn only $2, then more than 
one quarter must go for housing. There are hundreds 
of ItaHan families in New York who pay only $2 per 
month for such shelter as they have, but it is only pro- 
viding for the primitive idea of mere shelter, not for the 
comforts of a true home life. After the fashion of early 



loO THE COST OF SHELTER. 



man, these people spend their Hves in the open air, eat 
wherever they may be, and use this makeshift shelter as 
protection from the weather and as a place of deposit 
for such articles as they do not carry about with them 
and for such weaklings as cannot travel. 

As man rises in the scale of wants he pays more, in 
attention and in money, for housing, because he leaves 
wife and children to its comforts while he goes forth to 
his daily tasks. As ideals rise, the proportion rises until 
even one third of his earnings goes for mere shelter. 
But this limits his desires in other directions, so that 
it becomes a pertinent question, when is it right to give 
as much as one third of the moderate income for hous- 
ing? As every heart knows its own bitterness, so every 
man knows his own business and what proportion of 
his income he is willing to spend for a house, for the 
comforts of life pertain largely to bed and board. It 
must be acknowledged, however, that comfort and 
discomfort are so largely matters of habit and personal 
point of view that education as to ideals is an important 
duty of society in its own defence. 

If two people without children prefer to spend more 
on shelter than on any other one thing, then with $3000 
a year, $1000 may be given for rent if that covers heat, 
light, and general outside care. But the family with 
children to consider must not think of allowing one 

third for rent under our very highest limit of $5000 a 



1 



COST OF HOUSING AND TOTAL INCOME. I OX 

year, and it is unwise even then. In fact the ratio must 
be governed by circumstances. It is true, however, that 
the conditions must be interpreted by a fixed principle 
in living and not by any mere fashion or prejudice of 
the moment. 

The one question every person asks when these sug- 
gested improvements are discussed is, but how much 
will it cost ? Thus confessing that cost, not effectiveness, 
is the measure; that old ideals as to money value still 
rule the world. It costs too much to have a furnace 
large enough to warm a sufficient volume of air, it costs 
too much to put in safe plumbing, it costs too much to 
keep the house clean, and so on through the list. We 
have been too busy getting and spending money to study 
the cost of neglect of cardinal principles of right living. 
The farmer knows the cost of his young animals, but the 
father cares Uttle and knows less of what it ought to 
cost to bring up his children — of the economy of spending 
wisely on a safe shelter for them. 

A new estimate of what necessary things must cost 
has to be made before the present generation will live 
comfortably in presence of the account-book. 

Here again a readjustment is coming; some expenses 
in house construction common now will be lessened or 
done away with ; for example, fancy shapes, grooved and 
carved wood, projecting windows and door-frames. ^ 

It is usual, when the various new methods arc brought 



I02 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

up, to estimate the cost as additional to all that has gone 
before, rather than to see in it a substitute for much that 
may go. 

Our family with $1500 income may safely pay $300 
for rent, if that covers enough comfort and does not 
mean too much car- fare. 

The house may cost $3000 if built on the old lines, and 
if the land it is placed on is not too expensive. 

A fire-proof house such as is described in the July 
number of the Brickhuilder and Architect^ 85 Water St., 
Boston, and probably also a house of reinforced concrete, 
will cost at present some $10,000 besides the land. Be- 
cause of freedom from repairs it should be possible to 
rent such houses for $500, which will bring them within 
the reach of our $3000 a year family, but not within 
the means of the $2000. What is to be done? 

It will be remarked by some that Httle attention has 
been given in these pages to the various so-called coopera- 
tive plans, like Mrs. Stuckert's oval of fifty houses con- 
nected by a tramway at each level, with a central kitchen 
from which all meals come and to which all used dishes 
return, with a central office from which service is 
sent, etc. 

Frankly, to my mind this is not enough better than the 
apartment hotel, as we now know it, to pay for the effort 
to establish it. As now evolved by demand, the establish- 
ments renting from one to fifteen thousand a year are 



COST OF HOUSING AND TOTAL INCOME. IO3 

on progressive lines. According to Mr. Wells, this 
shareholding class is on the way to extinction in any 
case, fortunately he also thinks, and the student of social 
economics need not concern himself with its future, only 
so far as its example influences the real bone and sinew 
of the republic, the working men and women who make 
the world the place it is. 

Within the ten-mile radius it has been usual to in- 
clude a front yard, if not a garden, in the house-lot. The 
cost of keeping this in the trim fashion decreed as essential, 
of planting and pruning of shrubs, of maintaining in 
immaculate condition the sidewalks and front steps, 
like most of the items in cost of living, is due to changed 
standards, just as the cost of table-board has advanced 
from $3 to $6 without a corresponding betterment in 
quality. 

Engle's law, *^The lodging, warming, and lighting have 
an invariable proportion whatever the income," does 
not hold under modem conditions for the group we are 
considering, for our wise ones need the best, and not a 
few of them are unwilling to buy their family sanctity 
at the price of a closet in the basement for the faithful 
maid. 

Plans may look well on paper, the completed house 
may seem attractive, but when the family live in the house 
its deficiencies become apparent. Cheap materials, 
flimsy construction, damp location, any one of a dozen 



I04 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

possibilities may make the family uncomfortable, may 
cost in heating and doctor's bills, may compel a moving 
before the year is out. Cheap houses in this decade 
are suspicious; the more need for a knowledge on the 
part of young people of what may be expected. 

For this reason it is a part of sound education to give 
a certain amount of attention to living conditions in the 
high-school curriculum. It is as important as book- 
keeping ; for of what avail are money and business, if the 
home Hfe is perilled? Besides, some of the pupils may 
have attention called to deficiencies which they may 
show talent in overcoming. 

Courses in Home Economics and Household Adminis- 
tration in colleges and universities should be directed 
to careful study of this branch of sociology. 

There is a great opportunity before women's clubs 
and civic-improvement associations to arouse an interest 
in the provision of suitable shelter for the young families 
in their several neighborhoods. Concerted movement 
by the Federation could revolutionize public opinion 
within a decade. 

The student of social science may well say that the 
first effort should be directed to a rise in the pay of these 
educated young men ; that no family should be expected 
to Hve on the sums here considered ; that it is not right 
even to consider a way out on the present basis. 
Possibly so. Much agitation is abroad in relation to the 



COST OF HOUSING AND TOTAL INCOME. I05 

pay of teachers, clerks, and skilled workmen, but that is 
another question which cannot be considered here. 

The salaried class has so enormously increased of 
late years because of the great consolidation of business 
interests that the final adjustment has not been made. 
The one fact of uncertain tenure of position and uncer- 
tain promotion has profoundly affected Hving condi- 
tions, ownership of the family abode, and, incidentally, 
marriage. 

There are prizes enough, however, to keep the young 
people on the alert for advancement, and they feel 
it more likely to come if they estabUsh themselves as 
if it had arrived. 

There is no denying that in the estimation of a large 
number of the groups we are considering, the question 
of neat and orderly service, the capped and aproned 
maid, the liveried bell-boy and butler, express — Uke the 
smoothly shaven lawn — a certain social convention; and 
because it means expense, the house in working order 
means more than shelter: it sets forth pecuniary stand- 
ing in the community. So long as this means social 
standing also, so long will the professional and business 
family on $2000 a year be shut out, because these 
adjuncts to a luxurious hving are impossible. Can 
society afford to shut out the intellectual and mentally 
progressive element, or must it accept as normal these 
salaries and make it respectable to begin on them? It 



I06 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

is the strain which unessential social conventions give to 
the young families that leads the business father to spec- 
ulate in order to get into the $io,ooo-a-year class, and 
that leads the young scientific and hterary man to take 
extra work outside of his normal duties. This sort of 
thing cannot go on without serious danger to the Repub- 
lic. Cleanliness and good manners should be insisted 
upon, but they may be secured on $3000 a year if too 
much else is not required. How to secure them on 
$1500 is a problem to be solved, for cleanliness costs 
more each decade. 

After all is said, if the young people have an earnest 
purpose in life it is easy to plan a method of hving and 
to carry it out. The sacrifices one must make in the 
house superficially, in the consideration of a certain 
class, are cheerfully borne and soon forgotten. 

Little discomforts which affect only one's feehngs and 
not one's health make rather good stories after they are 
over. What is worth while? Are we become too sensi- 
tive to little things ? Do we imagine we show our higher 
civihzation by discerning with the little princess the pea 
under twenty-four feather beds? 

Let our shelter be first of all healthful, physically and 
morally. If to gain these quahties we must take a house 
in an unfashionable neighborhood, it should not cause 
distress. Why is this particular region unfashionable? 
Is it not merely because certain would-be leaders choose 



COST OF HOUSING AND TOTAL INCOME. lO? 

to live beyond their means in company with those who 
are able to spend more? 

Why not be honest and happy? Live within your 
income and make it cover the truest kind of living. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

TO OWN OR TO RENT: A DIFFICULT QUESTION. 

"Half the sting of poverty is gone when one keeps house for 
one's own comfort and not for the comment of one's neighbors." — 
Miss MuLOCK. 

When the ideals of an older generation are forced 
upon a younger, already struggling under new and 
strange environment, the effect is often opposite to that 
intended. The elders in their pride of knowledge, and 
the real-estate promoters in their greed for gain, have 
been urging the young man to own his house on penalty 
of shirking his plain duty. They say he must have a 
home to offer his bride, as the bird has a nest. Build- 
ing-loan associations, homes on the instalment plan, 
appeal to the sentiments they think the young man 
ought to heed. 

The young man is often modest, almost always sensi- 
tive, and he prefers to bear dispraise rather than to 
tell the real reason he hesitates. His ear is closer to 
the ground, he feels even if he cannot express the doubt 
of the disinterestedness of the land-scheme promoter, 

io8 



TO OWN OR TO RENT: A DIFFICULT QUESTION. lOQ 

of the wisdom of his father. He knows better than his 
elders the uncertainties of salaried men, young men 
with a way to make in the unstable conditions of to-day. 

The effect of this well-meant advice is not to hasten 
his marriage, but to put it off because he is not allowed 
to take the course he feels safest. Or if he is willing, the 
parents of his prospective bride are not, and so young 
people do not marry on $1000 a year, for fear of the 
elder generation and their supposed wisdom. 

The young people are not justified by present-day 
conditions in owning a house on an income of $2000 a 
year unless 

(i) They have money to put into it which it will not 
cripple them for life to lose; 

(2) They care so much for the idea of ownership that 
they are willing to take the risk of losing one half the 
investment should they be compelled to move; 

(3) They possess the fortitude to give it up at the 
call of duty after all they have lavished on it; 

(4) They care enough for the real education and the 
real fun they will get out of it to save in other ways what 
the running and repairs will cost over and above the 
amount estimated. This saving will be largely by doing 
many things with their own hands. 

To be bound hand and foot cither by unsalable real 
estate or by sentiment is an uncomfortable condition 
for the young family who may find itself in uncongenial 



no THE COST OF SHELTER. 

surroundings, in an unhealthful situation, or who may 
need to retrench temporarily. 

Another serious objection to building and owning a 
house in the first years of married hfe is the chance that 
the house will be too large or too small, or the railroad 
station will be moved, or the trolley line will be run under 
the garden window, or a smoking chimney will fill the 
library with soot (although the latter will not be per- 
mitted in the real twentieth-century town). 

A new element has come into the question of ownership 
by the family of Hmited means which did not meet the 
elder generation of house-owners. In the past the 
repairs were confined to a coat of paint now and then, 
new shingles, an added hen-house, or a bay window. 
The well might have to be deepened, but little expense 
was put into or onto the house for fifty years. The 
married son or daughter might add a wing, but the main 
house once built was never disturbed. In the modem 
plastic condition of both ideals and materials this is all 
changed. In any city well known to my readers how 
many streets bear the same aspect as five years ago? 
In any suburban village made familiar by the trolley 
how many houses are the same as five years ago ? Even 
if their outward aspect is not changed, that worst of all . 
havocs, new plumbing, has been put in. The installa- 
tion of neither furnace nor plumbing is accomphshed 
once for all; at the end of ten years at most repairs or 



TO OWN OR TO rent: A DIFFICULT QUESTION. Ill 

replacement must be made on penalty of loss of health. 
As the community grows in wisdom and in knowledge it 
makes sanitary regulations more stringent notwithstanding 
the fact that the increase in expense bears most heavily on 
the small householder with a family whose need is out of 
proportion to the income. Many a parent who grieves 
the loss of his child would gladly have paid a reason- 
able sum for repairs, but would have been in the 
poor debtors' court if he had allowed the plumbers to 
enter his house. The new laws made since he bought 
his house require diametrically opposite things, and 
the old fittings must all be torn out as well as four times 
as costly put in. 

It is a sad fact that the advantages of all modem sanita- 
tion are so often denied to those who need and who would 
appreciate them. The renter has here an advantage 
over the owner. He can call for an examination by the 
city or town inspector before he takes a lease; the capi- 
talist owner must then put matters right. But as yet 
a man has a right to live with leaky sewer- or gas-pipes 
in his own house without being disturbed by an inspector. 
How far into the century this will be allowed is uncertain; 
in time there will be an inspection of the premises of the 
small owner. 

The only remedy in sight is for an investment of capital 
in up-to-date houses of various grades in city, suburbs, 
and country; such investment to bring 4 percent, not 40, 



112 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

or even 15, unless by rise of land values. No better 
use of idle money could be made at the present time. 
In ^^Anticipations '^ Mr. Wells writes: ^^The erection of 
a series of experimental labor-saving houses by some 
philanthropic person for exhibition and discussion would 
certainly bring about an extraordinary advance in do- 
mestic comfort; but it will probably be many years be- 
fore the cautious enterprise of advertising firms approxi- 
mates to the economies that are theoretically possible 
to-day." This is truer now than when Mr. Wells was 
writing. 

The great difficulty in the way is the first outlay. So 
many things will have to be designed, patterns made 
and machinery built to make them; for this advance 
in construction will not be by hand-made things. 
There will be more head-work put into the various 
articles, but the mass of constructive material must 
be machine-made, at least for the family of limited 
income. And these articles need not be ugly. There 
must be many of the same kind in the world, to be sure; 
but if the design fits the purpose, this may not be an 
evil No one objects to a beautiful elm-tree in his 
field because in hundreds of fields there are similar 
elm-trees. SHght variations in finish, color, etc., can 
give individuahty to the simplest chair. 

Therefore the first outlay for the new order will be 
beyond the purse of any single family of this group. 



TO OWN OR TO RENT : A DIFFICULT QUESTION. II3 

If we had learned to cooperate sanely, a group might 
undertake it, but the most probable method will be 
for some far-sighted men to agree to sink a certain amount 
of money in experiment, just as they now sink money in 
prospecting a mine with all the uncertainty it brings. 
Abihty to risk in an experiment must go hand in hand 
with capital to use. 

The objection commonly made is that all individuahty 
will be taken away, that each one must live like every 
one else in the neighborhood. This is not an essential 
consequence, but will it be so impossible to have a cer- 
tain similarity in the dweUings of Hke-minded people? 
In '* Anticipations " it is declared that '' Unless some great 
catastrophe in Nature breaks down all that man has 
built, these great kindred groups of capable men and 
educated adequate women must be under the forces we 
have considered so far, the element finally emergent 
amid the vast confusions of the coming time.'' * 

The practical people, the engineering and medical 
and scientific people, will become more and more homo- 
geneous in their fundamental culture. 

The decreasing of the space one can call one's own 
within urban limits has so steadily increased, and the 
need for freer air has become so fully recognized, that 
the case of the single householder in the suburbs and 

* Anticipations, pp. 153-4. 



114 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

even in the country is bound to press harder and harder. 
The group system elsewhere referred to, with central 
heating plant and workers of all grades at telephone- 
call, will make possible at a reasonable rent within easy 
reach of tlie city the single household of one, two, or 
three, as the case may be, and if without children of 
their own, to such shelter may come some of those home- 
less little ones we have with us always, to share in the 
sun and wind and garden. In the real country, with 
acres instead of feet of land, much of the same kind 
of elaborate simpHcity will be found. Certainly the 
same kind of fire-proof house of only one story with 
more light, ''roofs of steel and glass on the louver 
principle," will obviate so frequent a change of air 
as a shut-in house requires, and give more equable 
temperature. 

In the city? Since physicians will surely be more 
insistent on hght, as well as fresh air, roof-gardens and 
balconies and glazed walls, so to speak, will be arranged 
by the architect so as not to offend the eye and yet to 
accomplish the results. He will cease from trying to 
put the new ideas of the twentieth century into the old 
houses of the eighteenth or fifteenth even, and that 
beauty, which is fitness, will come forth from the tangle 
of ugliness everywhere. If, as the economist tells us, 
"cost measures lack of adjustment," then the perfectly 
adjusted house will not be costly in reaUty, it will be 



TO OWN OR TO rent: A DIFFICULT QUESTION. II 5 

adapted to the production and protection of effective 
human beings. 

The cellar has for some years been changing to a 
storage for trunks instead of vegetables. The old- 
fashioned housewife exclaims at the lack of storage in 
the house of to-day, and we are eUminating it still more. 
A twentieth-century axiom is, ^^ Throw or give away 
everything you have not immediate or prospective use 
fof." It is as true of household furniture as of books; 
only the very best is of any value second-hand. Our 
young people may have heirlooms, but they will buy very 
little in the way of sideboards or first editions. The 
moral of modem tendencies is, buy only what you are 
sure you will need or what you care for so intensely 
that you will keep it come what may. Housing of 
possible treasures is far too costly 

At the foundation of the ethical side of ownership 
is the primitive impulse of possession, that ownership 
which led to wife-capture, to feudal castles, to accumu- 
lation of things, and to-day is expressed by the man 
who prefers to have his steak cooked in his own kitchen 
even if it is burned. 

It is notorious that most of us put up with discom- 
fort if it is caused by our own. A family of eight will 
use one bath-room without murmur if the house is theirs, 
but will complain loudly if the landlord will not add 
two without increasing the rent. 



Il6 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

At the foundation of what seem exorbitant rents is 
this demand for modem improvements in old houses, 
and the atrocious carelessness of tenants of property. 
It is not their own, and they do not obey the golden rule 
in the use of it. 

Every five years or so plumbing laws are changed, 
and if an old house is touched the fixtures and pipes 
must be all renewed. Tenants have learned to fear 
the sanitation of old houses, and yet abuse the apphances 
they should care for. 

PubHc ownership or corporate ownership or an 
increased lawlessness are accountable for a disregard 
of others' rights and of property which is unnecessarily 
increasing the cost of living. 

I have said elsewhere that it is not because the land- 
lord does not want children in the house but because he 
does not want such ill-bred children, vandals, who have 
no respect for anything. He charges high rent because 
his investment is good for only ten years. 

The shibboleth of duty to own a home has so strong 
a hold on the moral sense of the people that it is made 
use of by the promoter who may in some cases think 
himself the philanthropist he intends others to call him. 
I mean that the duty of owning and the heinousness 
of paying rent are so ingrained that buying on the install- 
ment plan has seemed a righteous thing, even with the 
examples of broken Hves in plain sight As an incentive 



TO OWN OR TO rent: A DIFFICULT QUESTION. II7 

to save, if there were anything to save, it might have 
been justified in the days of feudaHsm. But for an 
independent American to confess that he cannot put 
money in the bank, and that he must bind himself and 
his family to slavery, for the sake of owning a bit of 
property which they will probably wish to sell before 
they have it paid for, is disgraceful. Intelligent men 
should see that here is the profit in the transaction; that 
enough go to the wall to pay for the trouble of the rest, 
just as in life insurance enough die before the expected 
time to put money in the pockets of the riskers. 

A drunken father may need to be held, but the young 
professor, the lawyer, the engineer, should have sufficient 
self-respect and firmness to save that which in his judg- 
ment is necessary, without being tied by ^'the instalment 
plan." This method is a very viper in the finances of 
to-day. The wise business man never ventures more 
than he can afford to lose in a risk, but the man who 
takes bread and milk from his children to invest in 
*'a sure thing" takes a risk with what is not his to 
give. 

To buy land for investment is another supposed virtue, 
an inheritance from the time when slow growth, once 
started in a given direction, kept on, so that great acumen 
was not needed to buy; but that is all changed to-day. 
Only those ^^in the ring" can tell where the **boom" 
will go next. 



Il8 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

In these days of unparalelled rapidity of change in 
industrial and social conditions it is most undesirable for 
a man to be hampered by a shell which is too large to 
carry about with him and too valuable to be left behind. 
To each reader will occur instances of the refusal of 
an advantageous offer because the family home could 
not be realized upon at once, the location once so favor- 
able had become undesirable, and the values put into 
it could not be recovered because of social conditions 
following industrial changes. 

The keen observer hesitates in view of all these con- 
ditions to advise any young man to invest in real estate 
for a home beyond a sum which he can afford to lose if 
need arises to move. These changes carry a need for 
mobilization of its army of workers. The encumbrance 
of family Lares and Penates cannot be tolerated. 
Only a small per cent of young men are to-day sure 
of remaining in the city in which they begin business. 
What folly to encumber themselves with real estate 
which, sold at a sacrifice, brings barely half its price! 
Moral exhorters have not carefully considered this side 
of the question in their arguments for house-owning 
and family-rearing as anchors to the young man. 

The fact noted earlier is a case in point. After the 
wedding-cards were out the bridegroom was trans- 
ferred to the charge of the company's office in another 
city. 



TO OWN OR TO rent: A DIFFICULT QUESTION. II 9 

The expenses necessitated by these frequent removals 
make an unaccounted-for item in many incomes. 

If the young couple have saved or inherited between 
them, say, $3000, shall they build a home with it ? De- 
cidedly not. Because the house will cost $5000 before they 
are done. Not only because of the unexpected in strikes 
and change in prices of materials, but because, as the 
plans take shape, the wife or the husband or both will 
see so many little points which they will ask for, the 
paper plan not having conveyed a definite idea to either. 
An excellent plan was carried out by a college woman. 
She made a model to scale in pasteboard, of such a size 
that every essential detail was shown in its relation to 
other portions of the structure. 

Even if these young people do not yield at the moment 
of building, they will probably wish they had yielded when 
they come to hve in the house. There will be nothing for 
it but to mortgage the place to make it satisfactory. 
One cannot take up a newspaper without finding notice 
after notice, reading, ''Must be sold to pay the mortgage.'' 

Exorbitant rent is of course social waste, and society 
must protect its ablest young people from their own 
folly; but when they understand the rules of the financial 
game better they will lend themselves more readily to 
some cooperative plan of relief. 

It is, as I well know, rank heresy, but I firmly believe 
that building and owning of houses can be afforded 



I20 THE COST OF SHELTER. 

only by those having the higher limit of income, $3000 
to $5000 a year, unless the person has a permanent 
position or a business of great security, and in these 
days who can be sure of anything? 

When the land-scheme promoter advertises homes on 
the instalment plan, beware of the trap! 

Let no one buy in the suburbs from a sense of duty 
and then hate the Ufe. 

Comfort in living is far more in the brains than in 
the back. 

It is so easy for a man or woman with one set of ideals 
to do that which another would consider impossible 
drudgery. 

My final advice is that the sensible young couple both 
of whom agree about essentials, and who are willing 
and glad to work together for a common end, and who 
love nature and gardening and believe in family life 
so strongly as not to miss the crowd and theatres, may - 
safely start a home in the country with a garden, and 
pets for the children, if they have a reasonable pros- 
pect of ten years in one spot. Let them make the 
place attractive for some family, even if they have to 
leave it. 

The women of this group will, I beheve, have the\ 
qualities Mr. Wells predicts: not only intelUgence and 
education, but a reasonableness and rehability not always 
found to-day. 



TO OWN OR TO RENT: A DIFFICULT QUESTION. 121 

Unless a reasonable prospect of ten years' occupancy 
is assured, then begin life in a rented house, not neces- 
sarily in a flat. Begin with a few things of your own 
some which have been yours for years, some which 
you have bought together and which have a meaning 
for one of you and are not irritating to the other. 

Devote a part of your leisure to a critical study of 
the house you would like, draw plans, make sketches 
in color, study color effects, learn about fabrics, collect 
them for the future. You will find an amusing and 
instructive occupation. 

The essential point is to begin this life on two thirds 
of what you have reason to expect as the year's income; 
keep the rest invested or in the bank. There are to-day 
many temptations to spend for things attractive in them- 
selves but not necessary to the effective Ufe. If friends 
are so silly as to rally you on living in an unfashionable 
quarter, ask them in to see your sketches and plans, and 
talk them into enthusiasm over the idea. Do missionary 
work with them rather than be ridiculed out of your con- 
victions. It sometimes seems as if young people had no 
convictions, as if they drifted with the wind of newspaper 
suggestion. So do not allow your friends to drive you to 
greater expense than you have determined upon, lest the 
end of the first two years of Ufe find you in debt with no 
fair start for the baby, whose life should begin in an 
atmosphere of quiet assurance that all is well. It is 



122 THE COST OF SHELTER. 



not impossible that the nervous irritabiUty and reckless- 
ness of many are due to the atmosphere of childhood. 
Then remember that the welfare and security oj the 
child is the wacthword oj the juture. 



A FEW BOOKS. 

Anticipations. H. G. Wells. 

Mankind in the Making. H. G. Wells. Scribners. 

A Modern Utopia. H. G. Wells. Scribners. 

Twentieth-century Inventions: a Forecast. Geo. Sutherland 

Longmans, Green, & Co. 
The Level of Social Motion. Michael Lane. Macmillan. 
The Theory of the Leisure Class. Thorstein Veblen. Macmillan. 
The Woman who Spends. Whitcomb and Barrows. 
Physical Deterioration: Its Causes and their Cure. A. Watt Smyth. 

E. P. Button. 
Shelter. Syllabus 94, Home Education Dept., Univ. of N. Y. 

State Library, Albany. 
Report of the Tenement-house Commission. 

123 



INDEX. 



A 

PAGE 

Adaptation 48, 5 1, 66 

lack of 40 

"Anticipations" 112, 113 

Advisers, home 71 

Age, spirit of the i 

Air .47, 74, 85, 99, 100, 113, 114 

Altruria 10 

Albert's, Prince, advice 39 

Apartment houses 46, 53, 57, 58, 90, 91, 98, 102 

Architects 18, 44, 65, 73, 88, 114 

Architecture, domestic 61 

Arts, constructive 82 

B 

Bachelor 37, 57 

apartment 57, 59 

Back, bending the 41 

strength of 43 

Badges of toil 42 

Boarding houses 51, 59 

origin of 34 

Breakfast 55, 56, 74 

Building 84, 88, 99, 109, 1 10 

laws 96 

loan associations 108 

125 



126 



INDEX. 



Building trades 96 

Bureau of Labor, U. S 81, 96 



Capital 20, 89, III, 113 

Care of rooms 36, 37 

human body 52 

Carpentry in high school 45 

Centrifugal force I9i 44 

Children 20, 28, 30, 32, 88, 100, loi, 114, 116, 120 

deterioration of manners of 16 

Choice 92 

City 20, 85, 89, 90, 91, 1 10, III, 114 

houses 34 

Civilization 19 

Class to work for 8 

Cleaning machine 77 

Cleanliness 106 

Clothing 92, 93, 98 

Colonial houses 3 

period, housebuilding of 4 

Southern type of, houses 45 

Commuter, trials of 56 

Companionship 55* 

Compromise 32, 33, 55 

Concrete 73 

Consciousness, social 65 

Construction 37, 46, 90, 95, 96 

Consumption, destructive 6 

Conveniences 46, 7 1 , 94 

Cooperation 6, 9, 17, 20 

Cost 33, 36, 47, 84, 88, 90, 92, 94, 96, 1 14 

increasing 11, 12, 89, 95 

of housing and total income 97.-107 

per person and per family 81-95 

Country 10, 29, 55, 56, 57, 61, 81, 85, 90, 91, 94, iii, 1 14 

Crowding 28, 47, 88, 99 



INDEX. 127 



D 

PAOB 

Dayton scheme 94 

Debt 20, 39 

Demand 97, 102 

business 35, 38 

Democracy 16, 95 

Deterioration of houses 34i 45 

Dirt 72, 74 

Discomforts 45, 106 

Discontent 15 

Dishonesty in standards 1 7, 40 

Dole, Charles i 

Domestic comfort 112 

machine 96 

progress, retarded 65 

unrest 40, 46 

Drainage 85 

Drudgery 83, 1 20 

Dust 43 

E 

Economics, home, exhibit 88 

household 104 

social 103 

Economist 114 

Economy 101,112 

ElTective Hfe 49, 50, 63, 64 

workers 65 

l^lTcctiveness 50, loi 

Ivfllciency 19, 50, 63, 64, 83, 95 

loss of 13, 106 

Ivii^'fgy 49, 50 

luiginecring, definition of 50 

Ivnglc's law 103 

l{nvironment <), 10, .|S, loS 

Ivulhenics 12, Hi 

Involution 9, 48 



128 INDEX. 

PAGE 

Expense 96, no, in, 121 

Expenses 17, 39, 83, loi, 119 

operating 1 7, 98 

Experience in doing 61 

lack of 40, 47, 61 

Experts, house 71 

Extravagance 39 

F 

Family. .2, 33, 68, 88, 91, 94, 100, loi, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 120 

table 16 

Farm life 4 

Flat 10, 32, 35, 46, 58, 98, 99, 121 

Flats 35, 36 

Floors, hard-wood 42, 43 

lignolith 72 

Food 19, 98 

Force 49, 50 

for regeneration. 8 

Foreigner 28, 31, 32 

Friction due to house 11 

G 

Garden 32, 33, 55, 85, 103, 114 

Gardening 55, 120 

Gas-stoves 42, 46 

Group system 28, 1 14 

H 

Habit, perils of 56 

Habits 6, 14, 19 

Hands 41, 42 

Heating 28, 65, 73, 104 

Home 14, 29, 43, 45, 118, 119 

abandonment of 40 

advisers 71 

Anglo Saxon meaning of i 

building of 45 



INDEX. 129 

PAGE 

Home economics. 104 

feeling 78 

life 37, 99, 104 

love of 2 

makers 99 

means privacy 3 

ties loosened 38 

Homeless 38 

Homestead 5, 6, 31 

Hospitality 75 

Hot water 46, 47, 75, 91 

House 43, 71, 78, 82, 83, 85, 90, 91, 93, 94, 9^, 97, 99, 

100, loi, 102, 103, 106, 108, 109, 114, 121 

building 57, 95 

Colonial. .0 5 

evidence of social standing 16 

-keepers 30, 47 

-keeping, twentieth-century 40 

-maids, physical inefficiency of 12 

planning in High School 45 

plans 89 

suburban 32 

Houses 20, 26, 27, 28, 29, 62, 104, no, 112, 116 

city 34 

Colonial, of New England 3 

four classes of 31 

modern 33 

Housing 16, 17, 19, 20, 37, 48, 57, 81, 95, 97, 98, 100 

I 

Ideal 5, 18, 20, 39, 52, 54, 55, 79, 85, 88, 100, 108, 120 

Ideas 4, 30, 78, loi, 114 

Improvements 61, loi 

Income 17, 19, 20, 30, 38, 39, 41, 49, 51, 53, 84, 

92, 96, 97, 100, 102, 107, 109, III, 119 

Individual 57, 100 

Industries, disappearance of 8 

Installment plan 108, 1 1 7 

Invasion of residential districts 35 



130 INDEX. 

PAGE 

Invention c » 11 

Investment 1 11, 117 

K 

Kitchen 102 

accompaniments 33 

remodelled, in Providence 67, 69, 72 

Kitchenette 36, 92 



Labor, Bureau of 93, 96 

-saving devices 82 

Lack 15 

of adaptation 40 

business training 96 

experience 40 

faithful service 35 

harmony , 35 

study 35 

Land 4, 20, 46, 47, 55, 97, 98, 102, 114, 117, 134 

Landlord 46, 47 

Land-scheme promoter 108, 120 

Lane, Mr. Michael 88 

Leaven of progress 8 

Legacy 31, 38, 40, 42, 44, 47 

"Level of Social Motion" 88 

Life 98 

effective 49, 50, 62 

frontier 18 

fuller 12 

home 99 

open air 54 

private, shabby 16 

restrained 9 

Light 47, 114 

Living, decent 47, 84, 92 

sane 66, 82 

cost of 116 



INDEX. 131 

PAGE 

Location 48 

Lodge, Sir Oliver 48 

M 

Machinery 5, 41, 58, 65, 66, 112 

Maid's rooms 36 

Making of things 36 

Man, early 100 

primitive 2 

Manners 16, 17, 75, 106, 122 

Marriage, responsibility of 8 

Meals 92, 93 

Mechanical 51, 83 

progress 64 

Menial 51, 52 

Middle, leaven of progress in 8 

Model Tenement Association, New York 52, 81, 99 

Money 85, 95, 108 

basis 51 

measure of success 6;^ 

spender 4 

value 9 

Morison, Geo. S 83 

Morris Building Co 28, 91 

Mulock, Miss 99 

N 

Nasmyth, James 42 

Natural selection 64 

Nature 10, 64, 113, 1 20 

love of 32 

return to 55 

Neill, Chas. P., extracts from address by 7 

New Epoch, The 83 

O 

Opinion, public 65 

Owen, Robert 9 



132 INDEX. 

PAGE 

Own or rent 108-122 

Ownership 108, 109, no, 115, 116, 119 

P 

Parks 88, 90 

Parsons, Wm. Barclay 49 

Patronage of the arts 15 

Permanence in homestead, lack of 5, 38 

Pettingill, Miss 43 

Philanthropist 20, 95, 112, 116 

Philanthropy 44, 52, 55 

Physical ill-being in domestics 12 

school children 12 

wage-earners 12 

Place of the house 48, 62 

Plans 103, 1 19 

Plumbing. 33i 48, no, 116 

Possibilities in sight 63, 80 

Preeminence, social 15 

Primitive man 2 

Principle, fixed loi 

race 10, 29 

Privacy 2, 7, 35, 58, 98, 99 

Private life shabby 16 

Productive work 6 

Progress 13, 19, 48, 65, 79 

leaven of 8 

race 9 

Protection 3, 6, 100, 115 

Q 

Question, a difficult 108-122 

R 

Race principle i, 10, 29 

Readjustment 14, 8s loi 



J 



INDEX. 133 

PAGE 

Real estate 20, 109, 118 

Refuge 3 

Regeneration, force for 8 

Rent 10, 20, 36, 38, 46, 54, 62, "73, 81, 84, 85, 91, 

92, 93, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 114, 116, 119, 121 

or own 108, 122 

-payers 37 

Residential districts, invasion of 35 

Responsibility of marriage 8 

Restaurant , 19, 36, 41 

Restrained life 9 

Return to nature 54 

Rights to property, etc 7 

Roosevelt, President 13 



Sanitarian 90 

Sanitary 27, 28, 30, 71, 81, 83, 85, 89, 96, 98, 121 

English, Inspectors Association, President of 88 

Sanitation 71, iii, 116 

Saving 29, 96, 98, 109, 117 

Schools, public 8 

Science 79, 80 

Scrubbing 40, 74 

Selection, natural 64 

Self-interest 63 

-preservation 8 

Service 98, 105 

faithful, lack of 40 

Sewer connection, houses without 33 

Shelter. . .2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 14, 17, 19, 26, 28, 30, 36, 37, 48, 52, 54, 59, 
62, 82, 83, 84, 85, 89, 91, 92, 94, 99, 100, loi, 104, 105, 106 

Shelter, marrying for 57 

Sheltering the children 7 

SimpUcity 49 

Social advance 63, 79 

aspiration 15 

betterment 52, 54, 81 

conditions 37, 118 



134 



INDEX. 



PAGE 

Social conscience 30, 52 

consciousness 65 

convention 20, 105, 106 

economics , 103 

ostracism 29 

pleasure 18 

preeminence 15 

science 104 

significance 28, 97 

standing 17. 105 

welfare 54, 84 

Society 18, 19, 30, 65, 83, 89, 100, 119 

Sociologist , 88 

Sociology 104 

Somerville 73 

Space 53, 84, 85, 99 

diminishing 11,113 

Spender. . 47 

Spirit of the age i 

Standards 17, 18, 19, 53, 94 

Stone, Mary Lowell, Home Economics Exhibit 88 

Structure 48 

Stuckert, Mrs 102 

Study, lack of 40 

Suburban 85, 90, no 

houses 32 , 

living 89 

square 53 

Suburbs 81, 90, 91, 98, in, 120 

vSun-parlors 54 

SunUght Park, England 94 



Table, family 16 

Tax 61 

Temporary home ' 38 

Tenant 46, 47, 50, 53, 9^, 99 

Tenement 20, 81, 90, 99 

N. Y. Model, Association 52 



INDEX. 135 

PAGE 

Tennyson 63 

Tenure, permanence of 76 

shortness of 18 

uncertain 105 

Transition period 4 

Tuberculosis 7 



U 

U. S. Bureau of Labor 81 

Unrest, domestic 40 

Unsanitary 51 

Utopian 79 



V 

Veblen 15, 16 

Ventilation 98 

Village houses 32 

influx from 34 

W 

Wage-earners 12, 37, 47, 81 

Waste, conspicuous 15, 16, 19 

Watchword of the future 122 

Water, hot 46 

Wedding presents 60 

Well-being of community threatened 14 

Wells, H. G 31, 44, 63, 72, 75, 88, 103, 112, 120 

White plague 99 

Wife 92, 93 

Window 74, 98 

Woman 5-8, 82 

Women, corporation of 29 

Women's work 94 

Work, menial 51 

productive 6 

women's 94 



136 INDEX. 



PAGE 

Workers, effective 65 

Working men 103 



Y 

Young people 8, 38, 39, 104, 106, 109, 119 

Youth, American 8 



SHORT-TITLE CATALOGUE 

OF THE 

PUBLICATIONS 

OF 

JOHN WILEY & SONS, 

New York. 
LoKDOi^: CHAPMAN & HALL, Limited. 



ARRANGED UNDER SUBJECTS. 



Descriptive circulars sent on application. Books marked with an asterisk (*) are sold 
at net prices only, a double asterisk (**) books sold under the rules of the American 
Publishers' Association at net prices subject t« an extra charge for postage. All books 
are bound in cloth unless otherwise stated. 



AGRICULTURE. 



Armsby's Manual of Cattle-feeding i2mo, $i 75 

Principles of Animal Nutrition 8vo, 4 00 

Budd and Hansen's American Horticultural Manual: 

Part I. Propagation, Culture, and Improvement i2mo, i 50 

Part II. Systematic Pomology i2mo, i 50 

Downing*s Fruits and Fruit-trees of America 8vo, 5 00 

Elliott's Engineering for Land Drainage i2mo, i 50 

Practical Farm Drainage i2mo, i 00 

Green's Principles of American Forestry i2mo, i 50 

Grotenfelt's Principles of Modern Dairy Practice. (Woll.) i2mo, 2 00 

Kemp's Landscape Gardening i2mo, 2 50 

Maynard's Landscape Gardening as Applied to Home Decoration i2mo, i e?o 

Sanderson's Insects Injurious to Staple Crops i2mo, i 50 

Insects Injurious to Garden Crops. (In preparation.) 
Insects Injuring Fruits. (In preparation.) 

Stockbridge's Rocks and Soils 8vo, 2 50 

Woll's Handbook for Farmers and Dairymen i6mo, i 50 

ARCHITECTURE. 

Baldwin's Steam Heating for Buildings i2mo, 2 50 

Bashore's Sanitation of a Country House i2mo. i 00 

Berg's Buildings and Structures of American Railroads 4to, 5 00 

Birkmire's Planning and Construction of American Theatres 8vo, 3 00 

Architectural Iron and Steel 8vo, 3 50 

Compound Riveted Girders as Applied in Buildings 8vo, 2 00 

Planning and Construction of High Ofl5ce Buildings 8vo 3 50 

Skeleton Construction in Buildings 8vo, 3 00 

Brigg's Modern American School Buildings 8vo, 4 00 

Carpenter's Heating and Ventilating of Buildings 8vo, 4 00 

Freitag's Architectural Engineering 8vo, 3 50 

Fireproofing of Steel Buildings 8vo, 2 50 

French and Ives's Stereotomy 8vo, 2 50 

Gerhard's Guide to Sanitary House-inspection i6mo, i 00 

Theatre Fires and Panics. , i2mo, i 50 

Holly's Carpenters' and Joiners' Handbook i8mo, 75 

Johnson's Statics by Algebraic and Graphic Methods 8vo, a 00 

1 



oo 
3 oo 
I 50 
3 50 



Kidder'-s Architects* and Builders' Pocket-book. Rewritten Edition. i6mo,mor., 5 00 

Merrill's Stones for Building and Decoration * gvo \ qq 

Non-metaUic Minerals : Their Occurrence and Uses 8vo' 

Monckton's Stair-building ' 

Patton's Practical Treatise on Foundations 8vo* t o^ 

Peabody's Naval Architecture Sv * 7 ^ 

Richey's Handbook for Superintendents of Construction i6mo, mor^* 4 ^^ 

Sabin's Industrial and Artistic Technology of Paints and Varnish *. 8vol 

Siebert and Biggin's Modern Stone-cutting and Masonry ' gvo' 

Snow's Principal Species of Wood ' g^^* 

Sondericker's Graphic Statics with Applications to Trusses, Beams^ and Arches. 

SVO, 2 3 

Towne s Locks and Builders' Hardware iSmo, morocco, 3 00 

Wait s Engineering and Architectural Jurisprudence Svo, 6 00 

T £ r\ • Sheep, 6 50 
Law of Operations Preliminary to Construction in Engineering and Archi- 
tecture Q 

ovo, 5 00 

T ^ ^ Sheep, 5 50 
Law of Contracts g^^' ^ ^^ 

Wood's Rustless Coatings: Corrosion and Electrolysis of Iron and Steel Svo' 4 00 

Woodbury's Fire Protection of Mills g^^* 2 <o 

Worcester and Atkinson's Small Hospitals, Establishment and Maintenance, 

Suggestions for Hospital Architecture, with Plans for a Small Hospital.' 

The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 Large 4to', i 00 

ARMY AND NAVY. 

Bernadou's Smokeless Powder, Nitro-cellulose, and the Theory of the Cellulose 

Molecule ^^ 

i2ino, 2 50 

* Brufi s Text-book Ordnance and Gunnery g^^ ^ ' 

Chase's Screw Propellers and Marine Propulsion . . . . . . '. . . gyj, 3 00 

Cloke'3 Gunner's Examiner q' 

crarg's Azimuth V.'. ■.■.'.■.■.■.■.■. ■.■.■.*.;;;;;;. 4to' ' ^ 

Crehore and Squier's Polarizing Photo-chronograph ... . . . ...".* gyo' 3 00 

Cronkhite's Gunnery for Non-commissioned Officers 24mo, morocco' 2 00 

* Davis's Elements of Law o ' 

* Treatise on the Military Law of United States .Svo, 7 00 

De Brack's Cavahr Outposts Duties. (Carr.) 24mo, motocco] I 00 

Dietz's Soldier's First Aid Handbook i6mo, morocco, i 2? 

♦Dredge's Modern French Artillery ^to, half morocco, 15 00 

. Durand's Resistance and Propulsion of Ships g^o 

* Dyer's Handbook of Light Artillery i2mo* \ ^o 

Eissler's Modern High Explosives \ g^^* 

* Fiebeger's Text-book on Field Fortification .Small 8vo' 2 00 

Hamilton's The Gunner's Catechism i8mo' i 

* Hoff' s Elementary Naval Tactics g^^* ^ 

Ingalls's Handbook of Problems in Direct Fire. ... gvn* a ^f^ 

* Ballistic Tables o^^' ^ l"" 

, . ovo, I 50 

* Lyons s Treatise on Electromagnetic Phenomena. Vols. I. and IL .8vo, each 6 00 

* Mahan's Permanent Fortifications. (Mercur.) 8vo, half morocco' 7 so 

Manual for Courts-martial i6mo, morocco,' i 50 

* Mercur's Attack of Fortified Places i2jno 2 ^^ 

* Elements of the Art of War ' g^^* 

Metcalf's Cost of Manufactures— And the Administration of Workshops 8vo' 5 

* Ordnance and Gunnery. 2 vols i2mo' 5 00 

Murray's Infantry Drill Regulations .' ;;i8mo,' paper! 10 

Nixon's Adjutants' Manual 24m 

Peabody's Naval Architecture 8vo* 7 so 



4 00 
00 



* rhelps's Practical Marine Surveying 8vo, 2 50 

Powell's Army Officer's Examiner limo, 4 00 

Sharpe's Art of Subsisting Armies in War i8mo. morocco, i 50 

* Walke's Lectures on Explosives 8vo, 4 00 

* Wheeler's Siege Operations and Military Mining Svo, 2 00 

Winthrop's Abridgment of Military Law i2mo, 2 50 

WoodhuU's Notes on Military Hygiene i6mo, i 50 

Young's Simple Elements of Navigation i6mo, morocco, i 00 

Second Edition, Enlarged and Revised i6mo, morocco, 2 00 

ASSAYING. 

Fletcher's Practical Instructions hx Quantitative Assaying with the Blowpipe. 

i2mo, morocco, 

Furman's Manual of Practical Assaying. Svo, 

Lodge's Notes on Assaying and Metallurgical Laboratory Experiments. . . .8vo, 

Miller's Manual of Assaying i2mo, 

O'Driscoli's Notes on the Treatment of Gold Ores Svo, 

Ricketts and Miller's Notes on Assaying 8vo, 

Ulke's Modern Electrolytic Copper Refining Svo, 

Wilson's Cyanide Processes i2mo, 

Chlorination Process i2mo, 

ASTRONOMY. 

Comstock's Field Astronomy for Engineers : Svo, 

Craig's Azimuth 4to, 

Doolittle's Treatise on Practical Astronomy Svo, 

Gore's Elements of Geodesy ' Svo, 

Hayford's Text-book of Geodetic Astronomy Svo, 

Merriman's Elements of Precise Surveying and Geodesy Svo, 

* Michie and Harlow's Practical Astronomy Svo, 

* White's Elements of Theoretical and Descriptive Astronomy i2mo, 

BOTANY. 

Davenport's Statistical Methods, with Special Reference to Biological Variation. 

i6mo, morocco, 

Thome' and Bennett's Structural and Physiological Botany i6mo, 

Westermaier's Compendium of General Botany. (Schneider.) Svo, 

CHEMISTRY. 

Adriance's Laboratory Calculations and Specific Gravity Tables i2mo, 

Allen's Tables for Iron Analysis Svo, 

Arnold's Compendium of Chemistry. (Mandel.) Small-Svo, 

Austen's Notes for Chemical Students i2mo, 

Bernadou's Smokeless Powder. — ^Nitro-cellulose, and Theory of the Cellulose 

Molecule i2mo, 

Bolton's Quantitative Analysis Svo, 

* Browning's Introduction to the Rarer Elements • Svo, 

Brush and Penfield's Manual of Determinative Mineralogy Svo,' 

Classen's Quantitative Chemical Analysis by Electrolysis. (Boltwood.). .Svo, 
Cohn's Indicators and Test-papers i2mo. 

Tests and Reagents , Svo, 

Crafts's Short Course in Qualitative Chemical Analysis. (Schaeffer.). . . i2mo, 
Dolezalek's Theory of the Lead Accumulator (Storage Battery). (Von 

Ende.) i2mo, 

Drechsel's Chemical Reactions. (Merrill.) i2mo, 

Duhem's Thermod3niamics and Chemistry. (Eurgess.) .Svo, 

Eissler's Modern High Explosives Svo, 

Effront's Enzymes and their Applications. (Prescott.) Svo, 

Brdmann's Introduction to Chemical Preparations. (Dunlap.) i2mo. 



I 


50 


3 


00 


3 


00 


I 


00 


2 


00 


3 


00 


3 


00 


I 


50 


I 


50 


2 


50 


3 


50 


4 


00 


2 


50 


3 


00 


2 


50 


3 


00 


2 


00 



I 


25 


2 


25 


2 


GO 


I 


25 


3 


00 


3 


50 


I 


50 


2 


50 


I 


50 


I 


50 


4 


00 


3 


00 


2 


00 


3 


00 


I 


50 


2 


50 


I 


25 


4 


00 


4 


00 


3 


GO 


I 


2S 



1' 



I 


50 


2 


oo 


5 


oo 


3 


oo 


12 


50 


I 


50 


3 


oo 


2 


oo 


I 


25 


2 


oo 


4 


oo 


I 


50 


2 


50 


3 


00 


I 


00 


2 


50 


2 


50 


I 


CO 


3 


00 


I 


25 


2 


50 


I 


00 


3 


00 



Fletcher's Practical Instructions in Quantitative Assaying with the Blcv^pipe, 

i2nio, morocco, 

Fowler's Sewage Works Analyses i2mo 

Fresenius's Manual of Qualitative Chemical Analysis. (Wells.) 8vo, 

Manual of Qualitative Chemical Analysis. Part I. Descriptive. (Wells.) 8vo, 
System of Instruction in Quantitative Chemical Analysis. (Cctn.) 

2 vols 8vo, 

Fuertes's Water and Public Health i2mo, 

Furman's Manual of Practical Assaying 8vo, 

* Getman's Exercises in Physical Chemistry i2mo, 

Gill's Gas and Fuel Analysis for Engineers i2mo, 

■Grotenfelt's Principles of Modern Dairy Practice. (Woll.) i2mo, 

Hammarsten's Text-book of Physiological Chemistry. (Mandel.) 8vo, 

Helm's Principles of Mathematical Chemistry. (Morgan.) i2mo, 

Hering's Ready Reference lables (Conversion Factors) iCn o mcrccco, 

Hind's Inorganic Chemistry 8vo, 

* Laboratory Manual for Students i2mo, 

HoUeman's Text-book of Inorganic Chemistry. (Cooper.) 8vo, 

Text-book o7 Orgahic Chemistry. (Walker and Mott.). 8vo, 

* Laboratory Manual of Organic Chemistry. (Walker.) i2mo, 

Hopkins's Oil-chemists* Handbook 8vo, 

Jackson's Directions for Laboratory Work in Physiological Chemistry. .8vo, 

Keep's Cast Iron ' 8vo, 

Ladd's Manual of Quantitative Chemical Analysis i2mo, 

Landauer's Spectrum Analysis. (Tingle.) 8vo, 

* Langworthy and Austen. The Occurrence of Aluminium in Vege able 

Products, Animal Products, and Natural Waters 8vo, 

Lassar-Cohn's Practical Urinary Analysis. (Lorenz.) i2mo, 

Application of Some General Reactions to Investigations in Organic 

Chemistry. (Tingle.) i2mo, 

Leach's The Inspection and Analysis of Food with Special Reference to State 

Control 8vo, 

Lob's Electrolysis and Electrosynthesis of Organic Compounds. (Lorenz, ).i2mo, 
Lodge's Notes on Assaying and Metallurgical Laboratory Experiments. .. .8vo, 

Lunge*s Techno-chemical Analysis. (Cohn.) i2mo, 

Mandel's Handbook for Bio-chemical Laboratory i2mo, 

* Martin's Laboratory Guide to QuaUtative Analysis with the Blowpipe. . i2mo. 
Mason's Water-supply. (Considered Principally from a Sanitary Standpoint.) 

3d Edition, Rewritten . .8vo, 

Examination of Water. (Chemical and Bacteriological.) i2mo, 

Matthew's The Textile Fibres i .8vo, 

Meyer's Determination of Radicles in Carbon Compounds. (Tingle.). . i2mo, 

Miller's Manual of Assaying i2mo, 

Mixter's Elementary Text-book of Chemistry i2mo, 

Morgan's Outline of Theory of Solution and its Results i2mo, 

Elements of Physical Chemistry i2mo, 

Morse's Calculations used in Cane-sugar Factories i6mo, morocco, 

Mulliljen's General Method for the Identification of Pure Organic Ccmpounds. 

Vol. I Large 8vo, 

O'Brine's Laboratory Guide in Chemical Analysis 8vo, 

O'DriscoU's Notes on the Treatment of Gold Ores 8vo, 

Ostwald'? Conversations on Chemistry. Part One (Ramsey.) i2lno, 

Ostwald's Conversations on Chemistry. Part Two. (Turnbull ). (In Press.) 

* Penfield's Notes on Determinative Mineralogy and Record of Mireral Tests. 

8vo, paper, 

Pictet's The Alkaloids and their Chemical Constitution. (Biddle.) £vo, 

Pinner's Introduction to Organic Chemistry. (Austen.) i2mo, 

Poole's Calorific Power of Fuels 8vo, 

Prescott and Winslow's Elements of Water Bacteriology, with Special Refer- 
ence to Sanitary Water Analysis i2mo, i 25 

4 



7 


50 


I 


CO 


3 


CO 


I 


CO 


I 


fo 




Co 


' 


,00 


I 


25 


3 


50 


I 


00 


I 


00 


I 


50 


I 


00 


2 


00 


I 


50 


5 


00 


2 


00 


2 


CO 


I 


50 




50 


5 


00 


I 


50 


3 


00 



* Reisig's Guide to Piece-dyeing 8vo, 25 00 

Richards and Woodman's Air, Water, and Food from a Sanitary Standpoint 8vo, 2 00 

Richards's Cost of Living as Modified by Sanitary Science i2mo, i 00 

Cost of Food, a Study in Dietaries i2mo, i 00 

* Richards and Williams's The Dietary Computer 8vo, i 50 

Ricketts and Russell's Skeleton Notes upon Inorganic Chemistry. (Part I. 

Non-metallic Elements.) Svo, morocco, 75 

Ricketts and Miller's Notes on Assaying Svo, 3 00 

Rideal's Sev^^age and the Bacterial Purification of Sewage Svo, 3 50 

Disinfection and the Preservation of Food Svo, 4 00 

Rigg's Elementary Manual for the Chemical Laboratory Svo, i 25 

Rostoski's Serum Diagnosis. (Bolduan.) i2mo, i 00 

Ruddiman's Incompatibilities in Prescriptions Svo, 2 00 

Sabin's Industrial and Artistic Technology of Paints and Varnish Svo, 3 00 

Salkowski's Physiological and Pathological Chemistry. (Orndorff.) Svo, 2 50 

Schimpf's Text-book of Volumetric Analysis i2mo, 2 50 

Essentials of Volumetric Analysis i2mo, i 25 

Spencer's Handbook for Chemists of Beet-sugar Houses i6mo, morocco, 3 00 

Handbook for Sugar Manufacturers and their Chemists. . i6mo, morocco, 2 00 

Stockbridge's Rocks and Soils Svo, 2 50 

* Tillman's Elementary Lessons in Heat • Svo, i 50 

* Descriptive General Chemistry Svo, 3 00 

Treadvi^ell's Qualitative Analysis. (Hall.) Svo, 3 00 

Quantitative Analysis. (Hall.) Svo, 4 00 

Turneaure and Russell's Public Water-supplies Svo, 5 00 

Van Deventer's Physical Chemistry for Beginners. (Boltwood.) i2mo, i 50 

* Walke's Lectures on Explosives 8"o, 4 00 

Washington's Manual of the Chemical Analysis of Rocks S"o, 2 00 

Wassermann's Immune Sera : Haemolysins, Cytotoxins, and Precipitins. (Bol- 
duan.) i2mo, I 00 

Well's Laboratory Guide in Qualitative Chemical Analysis Svo, i 50 

Short Course in Inorganic Qualitative Chemical Analysis for Engineering 

Students i2mo, i 50 

Text-book of Chemical Arithmetic i2mo, i 25 

Whipple's Microscopy of Drinking-water Svo, 3 50 

Wilson's Cyanide Processes i2mo, i 50 

Chlorination Process i2mo, i 50 

Wulling's Elementary Course in Inorganic, Pharmaceutical, and Medical 

Chemistry i2mo, 2 00 

CIVIL ENGINEERING. 
BRIDGES AND ROOFS. HYDRAULICS. MATERIALS OF ENGINEERING. 
RAILWAY ENGINEERING. 

Baker's Engineers' Surveying Instruments 12 mo, 3 00 

Bixby's Graphical Computing Table Paper i9+X24i inches. 25 

** Burr's Ancient and Modern Engineering and the Isthmian Canal. (Postage, 

27 cents additional.) Svo, 3 50 

Comstock's Field Astronomy for Engineers Svo, 2 50 

Davis's Elevation and Stadia Tables Svo, i 00 

Elliott's Engineering for Land Drainage i2mo, i 50 

Practical Farm Drainage i2mo, i 00 

*Fiebeger's Treatise on Civil Engineering Svo, 5 00 

Folwell's Sewerage. (Designing and Maintenance.) Svo, 3 00 

Freitag's Architectural Engineering. 2d Edition, Rewritten Svo, 3 50 

French and Ives's Stereotomy. Svo, 2 50 

Goodhue's Municipal Improvements i2mo, i 75 

Goodrich's Economic Disposal of Towns* Refuse Svo, 3 50 

Gore's Elements of Geodesy . Svo, 2 50 

Hayford's Text-book of Geodetic Astronomy . Svo, 3 00 

Hering's Ready Reference Tables (Conversion Factors^ lOmo, morocco, 2 50 

5 



Howe's Retaining Walls for Earth i2mo, i 25 

Johnson's (J. B.) Theory and Practice of Surveying Small 8vo, 4 00 

Johnson's (L. J.) Statics by Algebraic and Graphic Methods 8vo, 2 00 

Laplace's Philosophical Essay on Probabilities. (Truscott and Emory.) . i2mo, 2 00 

Mahan's Treatise on Civil Engineering. (1873.) (Wood.) 8vo, 5 00 

* Descriptive Geometry 8vo, i 50 

Merriman's Elements of Precise Surveying and Geodesy 8vo, 2 50 

Elements of Sanitary Engineering 8vo, 2 00 

Merriman and Brooks's Handbook for Surveyors i6mo, morocco, 2 00 

Nugent's Plane Surveying 8vo, 3 50 

Ogden's Sewer Design i2mo, 2 00 

Patton's Treatise on Civil Engineering 8vo half leather, 7 50 

Reed's Topographical Drawing and Sketching 4to, 5 00 

Rideal's Sewage and the Bacterial Purification of Sewage 8vo, 3 50 

Siebert and Biggin's Modern Stone-cutting and Masonry 8vo, i 50 

Smith's Manual of Topographical Drawing. (McMillan.) 8vo, 2 50 

Sondericker's Graphic Statics, with Applications to Trusses, Beams, and Arches. 

8vo, 2 00 

Taylor and Thompson's Treatise on Concrete, Plain and Reinforced 8vo, 5 00 

* Trautwine's Civil Engineer's Pocket-book i6mo, morocco, 5 00 

Wait's Engineering and Archi ectural Jurisprudence 8vo, 6 00 

Sheep, 6 5c 
Law of Operations Preliminary to Construction in Engineering and Archi- 
tecture 8vo, 5 00 

Sheep, 5 50 

Law of Contracts 8vt), 3 00 

Warren's Stereotomy — Problems in Stone-cutting 8vo, 2 50 

Webb's Problems in the Use and Adjustment of Engineering Instruments. 

i6mo, morocco, i 25 

* Wheeler s Elementary Course of Civil Engineering 8vo, 4 00 

Wilson's Topographic Surveying -. 8vo, 3 50 

BRIDGES AND ROOFS. 

Boiler's Practical Treatise on the Construction of Iron Highway Bridges. Sto, 2 00 

* Thames River Bridge 4to, paper, 5 00 

Burr's Course on the Stresses in Bridges and Roof Trusses, Arched Ribs, and 

Suspension Bridges 8vo, 3 50 

Burr and Falk's Influence Lines for Bridge and Roof Computations. . . .8vo, 3 00 

Du Bois's Mechanics of Engineering. Vol. II Small 4to, 10 00 

Foster's Treatise on Wooden Trestle Bridges 4to, 5 oo 

Fowler's Ordinary Foundations 8vo, 3 50 

Greene's Roof Trusses 8vo, i 25 

Bridge Trusses 8vo, 2 50 

Arches in Wood, Iron, and Stone 8vo, 2 50 

Howe's Treatise on Arches 8vo, 4 00 

Design of Simple Roof-trusses in Wood and Steel 8vo, 2 00 

Johnson, Bryan, and Turneaure's Theory and Practice in the Designing of 

Modern Framed Structures Small 4to, 10 00 

Merriman and Jacoby's Text-book on Roofs and Bridges : 

Part I. Stresses in Simple Trusses 8vo, 2 50 

Part n. Graphic Statics 8vo, 2 sp 

Part in. Bridge Design 8vo, 2 50 

Part rV. Higher Structures 8vo^ 2 50 

Morison's Memphis Bridge 4to, 10 00 

Waddell's De Pontibus, a Pocket-book for Bridge Engineers. . i6mo, morocco, 3 00 

Specifications for Steel Bridges i2mo. 1 25 

Wood's Treatise on the Theory of the Construction of Bridges and Roofs. .8vo, 2 CC 
Wright's Designing of Draw-spans: 

Part I. Plate-girder Draws 8vo, 2 50 

Part II. Riveted-truss and Pin-connected Long-span Draws 8vo, 2 50 

Two parts in one volume . . 8vo, 3 50 

6 



2 


OO 


5 


00 


6 


OO 


I 


50 


2 


50 


3 


00 


4 


00 


5 


00 


I 


50 


2 


50 


4 


00 


3 


00 


2 


50 



HYDRAULICS. 

Bazin's Experiments upon the Contraction of the Liquid Vein Issuing from 

an Orifice. (Trautwine.) 8vo, 

Bovey's Treatise on Hydraulics 8vo, 

Church's' Mechanics of Engineering 8vo, 

Diagrams of Mean Velocity of Water in Open Channels paper, 

Coffin's Graphical Solution of HydrauUc Problems i6mo, morocco, 

Flather's Dynamometers, and the Measurement of Power i2mo, 

Folwell's Water-supply Engineering 8vo, 

Frizell's Water-power 8vo, 

Fuertes's Water and Public Health i2mo, 

Water-filtration Works i2mo, 

Ganguillet and Kutter's General Formula for the Uniform Flow of Water in 

Rivers and Other Channels. (Bering and Trautwine.) 8vo, 

Hazen's Filtration of Public Water-supply 8vo, 

Hazlehurst's Towers and Tanks for Water-works 8vo, 

Herschel's 115 Experiments on the Carrying Capacity of Large, Riveted, Metal 

Conduits 8vo, 2 00 

Mason's Water-supply. (Considered Principally from a Sanitary Standpoint.) 

8vo, 4 00 

Merriman's Treatise on Hydraulics 8vo, 5 00 

* Michie's Elements of Analytical Mechanics 8vo, 4 00 

Schuyler's Reservoirs for Irrigation, Water-power, and Domestic Water- 
supply Large 8vo, 5 00 

** Thomas and Watt's Improvement of Rivers. (Post., 44c. additional. ).4to, 6 00 

Turneaure and Russell's Public Water-supplies 8vo, 5 00 

Wegmann's Design and Construction of Dams 4to, 5 00 

Water-supply of the City of New York from 1658 to 1895 4to, 10 00 

Williams and Hazen's Hydraulic Tables 8vo, i 50 

Wilson's Irrigation Engineering .Small 8vo, 4 00 

Wolff's Windmill as a Prime Mover 8vo, 3 00 

Wood's Turbines. 8vo, 2 50 

Elements of Analytical Mechanics 8vo, 3 00 

MATERIALS OF ENGINEERING. 

Baker's Treatise ©n Masonry Construction 8vo, 5 00 

Roads and Pavements 8vo, 5 00 

Black's United States Public Works Oblong 4to, 5 00 

Bovey's Strength of Materials and Theory of Structures 8vo, 7 50 

Burr's Elasticity and Resistance of the Materials of Engineering 8vo, 7 50 

Byrne's Highway Construction 8vo, 5 00 

Inspection of the Materials and Workmanship Employed in Construction. 

i6mo, 3 00 

Church's Mechanics-of -Engineering 8vo, 6 00 

Du Bois's Mechanics of Engineering. Vol. I Small 4to, 7 50 

*Eckei's Cements, Limes, and Plasters 8vo, 6 00 

Johnson's Materials of Construction Large 8vo, 6 00 

Fowler's Ordinary Foundations 8vo, 3 50 

Keep's Cast Iron 8vo, 2 50 

Lanza's Applied Mechanics 8vo, 7 50 

Marten's Handbook on Testing Materials. (Henning.) 2 vols 8vo, 7 50 

Merrill's Stones for Building and Decoration 8vo, 5 00 

Merriman's Mechanics of Materials. 8vo, 5 00 

Strength of Materials i2mo, i 00 

Metcalf's Steel. A Manual for Steel-users. . . 12 mo, 2 00 

Patton's Practical Treatise on Foundations 8vo, 5 00 

Richardson's Modern Asphalt Pavements 8vo, 3 00 

Richey's Handbook for Superintendents of Construction. i6mo, mor., 4 00 

Rockwell's Roads and Pavements in France i2mo, i 

7 



25 



3 


OO 


I 


oo 


3 


50 


2 


00 


2 


00 


5 


00 


8 


00 


2 


00 


3 


50 


2 


50 


5 


00 


4 


00 


3 


00 


I 


25 


2 


00 


3 


00 



Sabin's Industrial and Artistic Technology of Paints and Varnish 8vo, 

Smith's Materials of Machines i2mo, 

Snow's Principal Species of Wood Svo, 

Spalding's Hydraulic Cement i2mo, 

Text-book on Roads and Pavements i2mo, 

Taylor and Thompson's Treatise on Concrete, Plain and Reinforced Svo, 

Thurston's Materials of Engineering. 3 Parts Svo, 

Part I. Non-metallic Materials of Engineering and Metallurgy Svo, 

Part II. Iron and Steel Svo, 

Part III. A Treatise on Brasses, Bronzes, and Other Alloys and their 

Constituents Svo, 

Thurston's Text-book of the Materials of Construction Svo, 

Tillson's Street Pavements and Paving Materials Svo, 

Waddell's De Pontibus. C ^ Pocket-book for Bridge Engineers.) . . i6mo, mor., 

Specifications for Stt 1 Bridges i2mo, 

Wood's (De V.) Treatise on the Resistance of Materials, and an Appendix on 

the Preservation of Timber Svo, 

Wood's (De V.) Elements of Analytical Mechanics Svo, 

Wood':, (M. P.) Rustless Coatings: Corrosion and Electrolysis of Iron and 

Steel Svo, 4 00 

RAILWAY ENGINEERING. 

Andrew's Handbook for Street Railway Engineers 3x5 inches, morocco, i 25 

Berg's Buildings and Structures of American Railroads 4to, 5 00 

Brook's Handbook of Street Railroad Location i6mo, morocco, i 50 

Butt's Civil Engineer's Field-book i6mo, morocco, 2 50 

Crandall's Transition Curve i6mo, morocco, i 50 

Railway and Other Earthwork Tables Svo, i 50 

Dawson's "Engineering" and Electric Traction Pocket-book. . i6mo, morocco, 5 00 

Dredge's History of the Pennsylvania Railroad: (1879) Paper, 5 00 

* Drinker's Tunnellinjg, Explosive Compounds, and Rock Drills. 4to, half mor., 25 go 

Fisher's Table of Cubic Yards Cardboard, 25 

Godwin's Railroad Engineers* Field-book and Explorers' Guide. . . i6mo, mor., 2 50 

Howard's Transition Curve Field-book i6mo, morocco, i 50 

Hudson's Tables for Calculating the Cubic Contents of Excavations and Em- 
bankments Svo, I 00 

Molitor and Beard's Manual for Resident Engineers i6mo, i 00 

Nagle's Field Manual for Railroad Engineers i6mo, morocco, 3 00 

Philbrick's Field Manual for Engineers i6mo, morocco, 3 00 . 

Searles's Field Engineering i6mo, morocco, 3 00 

Railroad Spiral i6mo, morocco, i 50 

Taylor's Prismoidal Formulae and Earthwork Svo, i 50 

* Trautwine's Method of Calculating the Cube Contents of Excavations and 

Embankments by the Aid of Diagrams Svo, 2 00 

The Field Practice of Laying Out Circular Curves for Railroads. 

N i2mo, morocco. 

Cross-section Sheet Paper, 

Webb's Railroad Construction i6mo, morocco, 

Wellington's Economic Theory of the Location of Railways Small Svo, 

DRAWING. 

Barr's Kinematics of Machinery Svo,' 

* Bartlett's Mechanical Drawing Svo, 

* '* " " Abridged Ed Svo, 

Coolidge's Manual of Drawing Svo, paper 

Coohdge and Freeman's Elements of General Drafting for Mechanical Engi- 
neers Oblong 4to, 

Durley's Kinematics of Machines Svo, 

Emch's Introduction to Projective Geometry and its Applications Svo. 



I 



2 


50 




25 


5 


00 


5 


00 






2 


50 


3 


00 


I 


50 


I 


00 


2 


50 


4 


00 


2 


50 



Hill's Text-book on Shades and Shadows, and Perspective 8vo, 2 00 

Jamison's Elements of Mechanical Drawing 8vo, 2 50 

Advanced Mechanical Drawing 8vo, 2 00 

Jones's Machine Design: 

Part I. ELinematics of Machinery 8vo, i 50 

Part n. Form, Strength, and Proportions of Parts 8vo, 3 00 

MacCord's Elements of Descriptive Geometry 8vo, 3 00 

Kinematics; or, Practical Mechanism 8vo, 5 00 

Mechanical Drawing 4to, 4 00 

Velocity Diagrams 8vo, i 50 

* Mahan's Descriptive Geometry and Stoae-cutting 8vo, i 50 

Industrial Drawing. (Thompson.) 8vo, 3 50 

Moyer's Descriptive Geometry 8vo, 2 00 

Reed's Topographical Drawing and Sketching 4to, 5 oo 

Reid's Course in Mechanical Drawing 8vo, 2 00 

Text-book of Mechanical Drawing and Elementary Machine Design. 8vo, 3 00 

Robinson's Principles of Mechanism 8vo, 3 00 

Schwamb and Merrill's Elements of Mechanism 8vo, 3 oo 

Smith's Manual of Topographical Drawing. (McMillan.) 8vo, 2 50 

Warren's Elements of Plane and Solid Free-hand Geometrical Drawing. i2mo, i 00 

Drafting Instruments and Operations i2mO:, i 25 

Manual of Elementary Projection Drawing i2mo, i 5» 

Manual of Elamentary Problems in the Linear Perspective of Form and 

Shadow i2mo, i 00 

Plane Problems in Elementary Geometry i2mo, i 25 

Primary Geometry i2mo, 75 

Elements of Descriptive Geometry, Shadows, and Perspective 8vo, 3 50 

General Problems of Shades and Shadows. 8vo, 3 oo 

Elements of Machine Construction and Drawing 8vo, 7 50 

Problems, Theorems, and ^Examples in Descriptive Geometry 8vo, 2 50 

Weisbach's Kinematics and Power of Transmission. (Hermann and Klein)8vo, 5 00 

Whelpley's Practical Instruction in the Ait of Letter Engraving 12 mo, 2 00 

Wilson's (H. M.) Topographic Surveying 8vo, 3 50 

Wilson's (V. T.) Free-hand Perspective 8vo, 2 5a 

Wilson's (V. T.) Free-hand Lettering 8vo, i 00 

Woolf's Elementary Course in Descriptive Geometry Large 8vo, 3 oa 



ELECTRICITY AND PHYSICS. 

Anthony and Brackett's Text-book of Physics. (Magie.) Small 8vo, 

Anthony's Lecture-notes on the Theory of Electrical Measurements, , . .i2mo, 
Benjamin's History of Electricity, 8vo, 

Voltaic Cell 8vo. 

Classen's Quantitative Chemical Analysis by Electrolysis'. (Boltwood.).8vo, 

Crehore and Squier's Polarizing Photo-chronograph 8vo, 

Dawson's "Engineering" and Electric Traction Pocket-book. i6mo. morocco, 
Dolezalek's Theory of the Lead Accumulator (Storage Battery). (Von 

Ende.) i2mo, 

Duhem's Thermodynamics and Chemistry. (Burgess.) 8vo, 

Flather's Dynamometers, and the Measurement of Power i2mo, 

Gilbert's De Magnete. (Mottelay.) 8vo, 

Hanchett's Alternating Currents Explained i2mo, 

Hering's Ready Reference Tables (Conversion Factors) i6mo, morocco, 

Holman's Precision of Measurements 8vo, 

Telescopic Mirror-scale Method, Adjustments, and Tests. . . Large 8vo. 

Kinzbrunner's Testmg of Continuous-Current Machmes. 8vo, 

Landauer's Spectrum Analysis. (Tmgle.) ♦ 8vo. 

Le Chatelien's High-temperature Measurements. (Boudouard — Burgess.) i2mo. 
Lob's Electrolysis and Electrosynthesis of Organic Compounds. (Lorenz.) i2mo, 

9 



3 


oa 


I 


00 


3 


00 


3 


00 


3 


00 


3 


00 


5 


oo 


2 


50 


4 


00 


3 


00 


2 


50 


I 


00 


2 


50 


2 


00 




75 


2 


00 


3 


00 


3 


00 


I 


00 



2 


50 


7 


oo 


7 


50 


I 


50 


6 


00 


6 


50 


5 


00 


5 


50 


3 


00 


2 


50 



* Lyons's Treatise on Electromagnetic Phenomena. Vols. I. and II. 8vo, each, 6 00 

* Michie's Elements of Wave Motion Relating to Sound and Light 8vo, 4 00 

Niaudet's Elementary Treatise on Electric Batteries. (Fishback.) i2mo, 2 50 

* Rosenberg's Electrical Engineering. (Haldane Gee — Kinzbrunner.). . .8vo, i 50 

Ryan, Norris, and Hoxie's Electrical Machinery. Vol. I Svo, 2 50 

Thurston's Stationary Steam-engines 8vo, 2 50 

* Tillman's Elementary Lessons in Heat 8vo, i 50 

Tory and Pitcher's Manual of Laboratory Physics Small 8vo, 2 00 

Ulke's Modern Electrolytic Copper Refining 8vo, 3 00 

LAW. 

* Davis's Elements of Law 8vo, 

* Treatise on the Military Law of United States 8vo, 

* Sheep, 

Manual for Courts-martial i6mo, morocco, 

Wait's Engineering and Architectural Jurisprudence 8vo, 

Sheep, 
Law of Operations Preliminary to Construction in Engineering and Archi- 
tecture 8vo, 

Sheep, 

Law of Contracts 8vo, 

Winthrop's Abridgment of Military Law i2mo, 

MANUFACTURES. 

Bernadou's Smokeless Powder — Nitro-cellulose and Theory of the Cellulose 

Molecule i2mo, 

Bolland's Iron Founder i2mo, 

*^ The Iron Founder," Supplement i2mo, 

Encyclopedia of Founding and Dictionary of Foundry Terms Used in the 

Practice of Moulding i2mo, 

Eissler's Modern High Explosives 8vo, 

Effront's Enzymes and their Apphcations. (Prescott.) 8vo, 

Fitzgerald's Boston Machinist i2mo, 

Ford's Boiler Making for Boiler Makers i8mo, 

Hopkin's Oil-chemists' Handbook 8vo, 

Keep's Cast Iron 8vo, 

Leach's The Inspection and Analysis of Food with Special Reference to State 

Control Large 8vo, 

Matthews's The Textile Fibres 8vo, 

Metcalf's Steel. A Manual for Steel-users i2mo, 

Metcalfe's Cost of Manufactures — And the Administration of Workshops 8vo, 

Meyer's Modern Locomotive Construction 4to, 

Morse's Calculations used in Cane-sugar Factories i6mo, morocco, 

* Reisig's Guide to Piece-dyeing 8vo, 

Sabin's Industrial and Artistic Technology of Paints and Varnish. ...... .8vo, 

Smith's Press-working of Metals 8vo, 

Spalding's Hydraulic Cement i2mo, 

Spencer's Handbook for Chemists of Beet-sugar Houses. .. . i6mo, morocco, 

Handbook for Sugar Manufacturers and their Chemists . i6mo, morocco, 

Taylor and Thompson's Treatise on Concrete, Plain and Reinforced 8vo, 

Thurston's Manual of Steam-boilers, their Designs, Construction and Opera- 
tion 8vo, 

* Walke's Lectures on Explosives 8vo, 

Ware's Manufacture of Sugar. (In press.) 

West's American Foundry Practice i2mo. 

Moulder's Text-book i2mo, 

10 



2 


5« 


2 


50 


2 


50 


3 


00 


4 


00 


3 


00 


I 


00 


I 


00 


3 


00 


2 


50 


7 


50 


3 


50 


2 


00 


5 


00 


10 


00 


I 


50 


25 


00 


3 


00 


3 


00 


2 


00" 


3 


00 


2 


00 


5 


00 


5 


00 


4 


00 


2 


50 


2 


50 



Wolff's Windmill as a Prime Mover 8vo, 3 00 

Wood's Rustless Coatings: Corrosion and Electrolysis of Iron and Steel. .8vo, 4 00 



MATHEMATICS. 

Baker's Elliptic Functions 8vo, i 5© 

* Bass's Elements of Differential Calculus i2mo, 4 oo 

Briggs's Elements of Plane Analytic Geometry i2mo, i 00 

Compton's Manual of Logarithmic Computations •. . . . i2mo, i 50 

Davis's Introduction to the Logic of Algebra 8vo, i 50 

* Dickson's College Algebra Large i2mo, i 50 

* Introduction to the Theory of Algebraic Equations Large i2mo, i 25 

Emch's Introduction to Projective Geometry and its Applications 8vo, 2 50 

Halsted's Elements of Geometry 8vo, i 75 

Elementary Synthetic Geometry 8vo, i 50 

Rational Geometry i2mo, i 75 

* Johnson's (J. B.) Three-place Logarithmic Tables: Vest-pocket size. paper, 15 

100 copies for 5 00 

* Mounted on heavy cardboard, 8X10 inches, 25 

10 copies for 2 00 

Johnson's (W. W.) Elementary Treatise on Differential Calculus . .Smali8vo, 3 00 

Johnson's (W. W.) Elementary Treatise on the Integral Calculus. Small 8vo, i 50 

Johnson's (W. W.) Curve Tracing in Cartesian Co-ordinates i2mo, i 00 

Johnson's (W. W.) Treatise on Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations. 

Small 8vo, 3 50 

Johnson's (W. W.) Theory of Errors and the Method of Least Squares. i2mo, i 50 

* Johnson's (W. W.) Theoretical Mechanics i2ino, 3 00 

Laplace's Philosophical Essay on Probabilities. (Truscott and Emory.) . i2mo, 2 00 

* Ludlow and Bass. Elements of Trigonometry and Logarithmic and Other 

Tables 8vo, 3 00 

Trigonometry and Tables published separately Each, 2 00 

* Ludlow's Logarithmic and Trigonometric Tables 8vo, i 00 

Maurer's Technical Mechanics 8vo, 4 00 

Merriman and Woodward's Higher Mathematics, 8vo, 5 00 

Merriman's Method of Least Squares 8vo, 2 00 

Rice and Johnson's Elementary Treatise on the Differential Calculus. . Sm. 8vo, 3 00 

Differential and Integral Calculus. 2 vols, in one Small 8vo, 2 50 

Wood's Elements of Co-ordinate Geometry 8vo, 2 00 

Trigonometry: Analytical, Plane, and Spherical i2mo, i 00 



MECHAinCAL ENGINEERING. 

MATERIALS OF ENGINEERING, STEAM-ENGINES AND BOILERS. 

Bacon's Forge Practice i2mo, i 50 

Baldwin's Steam Heating for Buildings i2mo, 2 50 

Barr's Kinematics of Machinery 8vo, 2 50 

* Bartlett's Mechanical Drawing 8vo, 3 00 

* " " " Abridged Ed 8vo, i 50 

Benjamin's Wrinkles and Recipes i2mo, 2 00 

Carpenter's Experimental Engineering 8vo, 6 00 

Heating and Ventilating Buildings 8vo, 4 00 

Cary's Smoke Suppression in Plants using Bituminous Coal. (In Prepara- 
tion.) 

Clerk's Gas and Oil Engine Small 8vo, 4 00 

Coolidge's Manual of Drawing 8vo, paper, i 00 

Coolidge and Freeman's Elements of General Drafting for Mechanical En- 
gineers Oblong 4to, 2 50 

11 



Cromwell's Treatise on Toothed Gearing. i2mo, 

Treatise on Belts and Pulleys ; i2mo, 

Durley*s Kinematics of Machines ' 8vo, 

Flather's Dynamometers and the Measurement of Power i2mo, 

Rope Driving i2mo, 

Gill's Gas and Fuel Analysis for Engineers i2mo. 

Hall's Car Lubrication i2mo, 

Bering's Ready Reference Tables (Conversion Factors) i6mo, morocco, 

Hutton's The Gas Engine 8vo, 

Jamison's Mechanical Drawing 8vo, 

Jones's Machine Design: 

Part I. Kinematics of Machinery Bvo, 

Part II. Form, Strength, and Proportions of Parts Bvo, 

Kent's Mechanical Engineers* Pocket-book i6mo, morocco, 

Kerr's Power and Power Transmission 8vo, 

Leonard's Machine Shop, Tools, and Methods Bvo, 

*Lorenz*s Modem Refrigerating Machinery. (Pope, Haven, and Dean.) . . Bvo, 

MacCord's Kinematics; or. Practical Mechanism Bvo, 

Mechanical Drawing 4to, 

Velocity Diagrams Bvo, 

Mahan's Industrial Drawing. (Thompson.) Bvo, 

Poole s Calorific Power of Fuels Bvo, 

Reid's Course in Mechanical Drawing Bvo, 

Text-book of Mechanical Drawing and Elementary Machine Design, Bvo, 

Richard's Compressed Air i2mo, 

Robinson's Principles of Mechanism Bvo, 

Schwamb and Merrill's Elements of Mechanism Bvo, 

Smith's Press-working of Metals Bvo, 

Thixrston's Treatise on Friction and Lost Work in Machinery and Mill 

Work Bvo, 

Animal as a Machine and Prime Motor, and the Laws of Energetics. i2mo, 

Warren's Elements of Machine Construction and Drawing .Bvo, 

Weisbach's Kinematics and the Power of Transmission. (Herrmann — 

Klein.) Bvo, 

Machinery of Transmission and Governors. (Herrmann — Klein.). .Bvo, 

Wolff's Windmill as a Prime Mover Bvo, 

Wood's Turbines Bvo, 



MATERIALS OF ENGINEERING. 

Bovey's Strength of Materials and Theory of Structures Bvo, 7 50 

Burr's Elasticity and Resistance of the Materials of Engineering. 6th Edition. 

Reset Bvo, 7 50 

Church's Mechanics of Engineering Bvo, 6 00 

Johnson's Materials of Construction Bvo, 6 00 

Keep's Cast Iron Bvo, 2 50 

Lanza's Applied Mechanics Bvo, 7 50 

Martens's Handbook on Testing Materials. (Henning.) Bvo, 7 50 

Merriman's Mechanics of Materials. Bvo, 5 00 

Strength of Materials i2mo, i 00 

Metcalf's SteeL A manual for Steel-users i2mo. 2 00 

Sabin's Industrial and Artistic Technology of Paints and Varnish Bvo, 3 00 

Smith's Materials of Machines i2mo, i 00 

Thurston's Materials of Engineering 3 vols., Bvo, B 00 

Part II. Iron and Steel - Bvo, 3 50 

Part HI. A Treatise on Brasses, Bronzes, and Other Alloys and their 

Constituents Bvo, 2 50 

Text-book of the Materials of Construction Bvo, 5 00 

13 



I 


50 


I 


50 


4 


00 


3 


00 


2 


00 


I 


25 


I 


00 


2 


50 


5 


00 


2 


50 


I 


50 


3 


00 


5 


00 


2 


00 


4 


00 


4 


00 


5 


00 


4 


00 


I 


50 


3 


50 


3 


00 


2 


00 


3 


00 


I 


50 


3 


00 


3 


00 


3 


ou 


3 


00 


I 


00 


7 


50 


5 


00 


5 


00 


3 


00 


2 


50 



Wood's (De V.) Treatise on the Resistance of Materials and an Appendix on 

the Preservation of Timber 8vo, 2 oO 

Wood's (De V.) Elements of Analytical Mechanics , 8vo, 3 00 

Wood's (M. P.) Rustless Coatings: Corrosion and Electrolysis of Iron and 

Ste«L 8vo, 4 00 



STEAM-ENGINES AND BOILERS. 

Berry's Temperature-entropy Diagram i2mo, i 25 

Carnot's Reflections on the Motive Power •f Heat. (Thurston.) i2mo, i 50 

Dawson's ''Engineering" and Electric Traction Pocket-book. . . .i6mo, mor., 5 00 

Ford's Boiler Making for Boiler Makers iSmo, i 00 

Goss's Locomotive Sparks 8vo, 2 00 

Hemenway's Indicator Practice and Steam-engine Economy i2mo, 2 00 

Button's Mechanical Engineering of Power Plants 8vo, 5 00 

Heat and Heat-engines 8vo, 5 00 

Kent's Steam boiler Economy 8vo, 4 00 

Kneass's Practice and Theory of the Injector 8vo, i 50 

MacCord's Slide-valves 8vo, 2 00 

Meyer's Modern Locomotive Construction 4to, 10 00 

Peabody's Manual of the Steam-engine Indicator i2mo. i 50 

Tables of the Properties of Saturated Steam and Other Vapors 8vo, i 00 

Thermodynamics of the Steam-engine and Other Heat-engines 8vo, 5 00 

Valve-gears for Steam-engines 8vo, 2 50 

Peabody and Miller's Steam-boilers 8vo, 4 00 

Pray's Twenty Years v/ith the Indicator. Large 8vo, 2 50 

Pupin's Thermodynamics of Reversible Cycles in Gases and Saturated Vapors. 

(Osterberg.) i2mo, i 25 

Reagan's Locomotives: Simple Compound, and Electric i2mo, 2 50 

Rontgen's Principles of Thermodynamics. (Du Bois.) 8vo, 5 00 

Sinclair's Locomotive Engine Running and Management i2mo, 2 00 

Smart's Handbook of Engineering Laboratory Practice i2mo, 2 50 

Snow's Steam-boiler Practice 8vo, 3 00 

Spangler's Valve-gears 8vo, 2 50 

Notes on Thermodynamics i2mo, i 00 

Spangler, Greene, and Marshall's Elements of Steam-engineering 8vo, 3 00 

Thurston's Handy Tables 8vo. i 50 

Manual of the Stefun-engine 2 vols., 8vo, 10 00 

Part I. History, Structure, and Theory 8vo, 6 00 

Part II. Design, Construction, and Operation 8vo, 6 00 

Handbook of Engine and Boiler Trials, and the Use of the Indicator and 

the Prony Brake 8vo, 5 00 

Stationary Steam-engines 8vo, 2 50 

Steam-boiler Explosions in Theory and in Practice i2mo, i 50 

Manual of Steam-boilers, their Designs, Construction, and Operation 8vo, 5 00 

Weisbach's Heat, Steam, and Steam-engines. (Du Bois.) 8vo, 5 00 

Whitham's Steam-engine Design 8vo, 5 00 

Wilson's Treatise on Steam-boilers. (Flather.) i6mo, 2 50 

Wood's Thermodynamics, Heat Motors, and Refrigerating Machines. . .8vo, 4 00 

MECHANICS AND MACHINERY. 



Barr's Kinematics of Machinery 8vo, 

Bovey's Strength of Materials and Theory of Structures 8vo, 7 

Chase's The Art of Pattern-making -. . . . i2mo, 2 

C.hurch!s Mechanics of Engineering 8vo, 6 

13 



2 50 
50 
50 

GO 



Church's Notes and Examples in Mechanics 8vo, 2 00 

Compton's First Lessons in Metal-working i2mo, i 50 

Compton and De Groodt's The Speed Lathe i2mo, i 50 

Cromwell's Treatise on Toothed Gearing i2mo, i 50 

Treatise on Belts and Pulleys i2mo, i 50 

Dana's Text-book of Elementary Mechanics for Colleges and Schools. . i2mo, i 50 

Dingey's Machinery Pattern Making i2mo, 2 00 

Dredge's Record of the Transportation Exhibits Building of the World's 

Columbian Exposition of 1893 4to half morocco, 5 oo 

Du Bois's Elementary Principles of Mechanics: 

Vol. I. Kinematics 8vo, 3 50 

Vol. II. Statics 8vo, 4 00 

Vol. III. Kinetics 8vo, 3 50 

Mechanics of Engineering. Vol. I Small 4to, 7 50 

VoL n Small 4to, 10 00 

Durley*s Kinematics of Machines 8vo, 4 00 

Fitzgerald's Boston Machinist i6mo, i 00 

Flather's Dynamometers, and the Measurement of Power i2mo, 3 00 

Rope Driving ". i2mo, 2 00 

Goss's Locomotive Sparks 8vo, 2 00 

Hall's Car Lubrication i2mo, i 00 

Holly's Art of Saw Filing i8mo, 75 

James's Kinematics of a Point and the Rational Mechanics of a Particle. Sro.8vo,2 00 

* Johnson's (W. W.) Theoretical Mechanics i2mo, 3 00 

Johnson's (L. J.) Statics by Graphic and Algebraic Methods 8vo, 2 00 

Jones's Machine Design: 

Part I. Kinematics of Machinery 8vo, i 50 

Part II. Form, Strength, and Proportions of Parts 8vc, 3 00 

Kerr's Power and Power Transmission 8vo, 2 00 

Lanza's Applied Mechanics 8vo, 7 50 

Leonard's Machine Shop, Tools, and Methods 8vo, 4 00 

*Lorenz's Modern Refrigerating Machinery. (Pope, Haven, and Dean.) .8vo, 4 00 

MacCord's Kmematics; or. Practical Mechanism 8vo, 5 00 

Velocity Diagrams 8vo, i 50 

Maurer's Technical Mechanics 8vo, 4 00 

Merriman's Mechanics of Materials 8vo, 5 00 

* Elements of Mechanics i2mo, i 00 

♦ Michie's Elements of Analytical Mechanics 8vo, 4 00 

Reagan's Locomotives: Simple, Compound, and Electric i2mo, 2 50 

Reid's Course in Mechanical Drawing 8vo, 2 00 

Text-book of Mechanical Drawing and Elementary Machine Design. 8vo, 3 00 

Richards's Compressed Air i2mo, i 50 

Robinson's Principles of Mechanism. . 8vo, 3 00 

Ryan, Norris, and Hoxie's Electrical Machinery. Vol. 1 8vo, 2 50 

Schwamb and Merrill's Elements of Mechanism 8vo, 3 00 

Sinclair's Locomotive-engine Running and Management i2mo, 2 00 

Smith's (O.) Press-working of Metals 8vo, 3 00 

Smith's (A. W.) Materials of Machines i2mo, i 00 

Spangler, Greene, and Marshall's Elements of Steam-engineering 8vo, 3 00 

Thurston's Treatise on Friction and Lost "\7ork in Machinery and Mill 

Work 8vo, 3 00 

Animal as a Machine and Prime Motor, and the Laws of Energetics. 

i2mo, I 00 

Warren's Elements of Machine Construction and Drawing 8vo, 7 50 

Weisbach's Kinematics and Power of Transmission. (Herrmann — Klein. ) . 8vo, 5 00 

Machinery of Transmission and Governors. (Herrmann — Klein. ).8vo, 5 00 

Wood's Elements of Analytical Mechanics 8vo, 3 00 

Principles of Elementary Mechanics i2mo, i 25 

Turbines 8vo. 2 50 

The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 4to, i 00 

14 



METALLURGY. 

Egleston's Metallurgy of Silver, Gold, and Mercury: 

Vol. i. Silver 8vo» 

Vol. II. Gold and Mercury 8vo, 

** Iles's Lead-smelting. (Postage 9 cents additional.) i2mo. 

Keep's Cast Iron 8vo, 

Kunhardt's Practice of Ore Dressing in Europe 8vo, 

Le Chatelier's High-temperature Measuremepts. (Boudouard — Burgess. )i2mo, 

Metcalf's Steel A Manual for Steel-users i2mo. 

Smith's Materials of Machines t i2mo» 

Thurston's Materials of Engineering. In Three Parts Svo 

Part n. Iron and Steel Svo, 

Part m. A Treatise on Brasses, Bronzes, and Other Alloys and their 

Constituents Svo, 

Ulke's Modern Electrolytic Copper Refining Svo, 

MINERALOGY. 

Barringer*s Description of Minerals of Commercial Value. Oblong, morocco, 

Boyd's Resources of Southwest Virginia Svo, 

Map of Southwest Virignia Pocket-book form. 

Brush's Manual of Determinative Mineralogy. (Penfield.) Svo, 

Chester's Catalogue of Minerals Svo, paper. 

Cloth, 

Dictionary of the Names of Minerals Svo, 

Dana's System of Mineralogy Large Svo, half leather. 

First Appendix to Dana's New ** System of Mineralogy." Large Svo, 

Text-book of Mineralogy Svo, 

Minerals and How to Study Them i2mo. 

Catalogue of American Localities of Minerals Large Svo, 

Manual of Mineralogy and Petrography i2mo, 

Douglas's Untechnical Addresses on Technical Subjects i2mo, 

Eakle's Mineral Tables Svo, 

Egleston's Catalogue of Minerals and Synonyms Svo, 

Hussak's The Determination of Rock-forming Minerals. (Smith.). Small Svo, 
Merrill's Non-metallic Minerals; Their Occurrence and Uses Svo, 

* Penfield's Notes on Determinative Mineralogy and Record of Mineral Tests. 

Svo paper, o 50 
Rosenbusch's Microscopical Physiography of the Rock-making Minera s. 
(Iddings.) Svo. 

* Tillman s Text-book of Important Minerals and Rocks ... .Svo. 

Williams's Manual of Lithology Svo, 

MINING. 

Beard's Ventilation of Mines i2mo. 

Boyd's Resources of Southwest Virginia Svo. 

Map of Southwest Virginia Pocket book form, 

Douglas's Untechnical Addresses on Technical Subjects i2mo. 

* Drinker's Tunneling, Explosive Compounds, and Rock Drills .4to.hf mor. . 

Eisslcr's Modern High Explosives Svo, 

Fowler's Sewage Works Analyses. i2mo. 

Goodyear's Coal-mines of the Western Coast of the United States i2mo. 

Ihlseng's Manual of Mining . gvcx. 

** Iles's Lead-smelting. (Postage gc. additional.) lamo. 

Kunhardt's Practice of Ore Dressing in Europe. . . Svo, 

O'Driscoll's Notes on the Treatment of Gold Ores Svo. 

* Walke's Lectures on Explosives Svo, 

Wilson's Cyanide Processes l2mo, 

Chlorination Process , i2mo, 

16 



7 


30 


7 


50 


2 


50 


2 


50 


I 


50 


3 


00 


2 


00 


I 


00 


S 


00 


3 


50 


2 


50 


3 


00 


2 


50 


3 


00 


2 


00 


4 


00 


I 


00 


I 


25 


3 


50 


12 


50 


I 


00 


4 


00 


I 


50 


I 


00 


2 


00 


I 


00 


I 


25 


2 


50 


2 


00 


4 


00 



5 


00 


2 


00 


3 


00 




50 




00 




00 




00 


25 


00 




00 




00 




50 




00 




50 




50 




00 




00 




50 




50 



Wilson's Hydraulic and Placer Mining i2mo 

Treatise on Practical and Theoretical Mine Ventilation T2mo, 

SANITARY SCIENCE. 

Bashore's Sanitation of a Country House i2mo, 

Folwell*s Sewerage. (Designing, Constniction, and Maintenance.) 8vo, 

Water-supply Engineering 8vo, 

Fuertes's Water and Public Health. i2mo, 

Water-filtration Works i2mo, 

Gerhard's Guide to Sanitary House-inspection i6nio, 

Goodrich's Economic Disposal of Town's Refuse Demy 8vo, 

Hazen's Filtration of Public Water-supplies 8vo, 

Leach's The Inspection and Analysis of Food with Special Reference to State 

Control Svo, 

Mason's Water-supply. (Considered principally from a Sanitary Standpoint) Svo, 

Examination of Water. (Chemical and Bacteriological.) i2mo, 

Merriman's Elements of Sanitary Eng;neering 8vo, 

Ogden's Sewer Design i2mo, 

Prescott and Winslow's Elements of Water Bacteriology, with Special Refer- 
ence to Sanitary Water Analysis i2mo, 

* Price's Handbook on Sanitation i2mo, 

Richards's Cost of Food. A Study in Dietaries i2mo. 

Cost of Living as Modified by Sanitaiy Science i2mo, 

Richards and Woodman's Air, Water, and Food from a Sanitary Stand- 
point Svo, 

* Richards and Williams's The Dietary Computer Svo, 

Rideal's Sewage and Bacterial Purification of Sewage Svo, 

Turneaure and Russell's Public Water-supplies Svo, 

Von Behring's Suppression of Tuberculosis. (Bolduan.) i2mo, 

Whipple's Microscopy of Drinking-water Svo, 

WoodhuU's Notes on Military Hygiene i6mo, 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

De Fursac's Manual of Psychiatry. (Rosanoff and Collins.). . . .Large i2mo, 2 50 
Emmons's Geological Guide-book of the Rocky Mountain Excursion of the 

International Congress of Geologists Large Svo, i 50 

Ferrel's Popular Treatise on the Winds 8vo. 4 00 

Haines's American Railway Management limo, 2 so- 

Mott's Composition, Digestibility, and Nutritive Value of Food. Mounted chart, i 25 

Fallacy of the Present Theory of Sound i6mo, i 00 

Ricketts's History of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1824-1894. .Small Svo, 3 00 

Rostoski's Serum Diagnosis. (Bolduan.) i2mo. i 00 

Rotherham's Emphasized New Testament Large Svo, 2 00 

Steel's Treatise on the Diseases of the Dog Svo, 3 50 

Totten's Important Question in Metrology Svo, 2 50 

The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 4to, i 00 

Von Behring's Suppression of Tuberculosis. (Bolduan.) i2mo, i 00 

Winslow's Elements of Applied Microscopy i2mo, i 50 

Worcester and Atkinson. Small Hospitals, Establishment and Maintenance; 

Suggestions for Hospital Architecture: Plans for Small Hospital. i2mo, i 23 

HEBREW AND CHALDEE TEXT-BOOKS. 

Green's Elementary Hebrew Grammar i2mo, i 25 

Hebrew Chrestomathy Svo, 2 00 

Gesenius's Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon tr the Old Testament Scriptures. 

(Tregelles.) Small 4to, half morocco, 5 00 

LettcPis's Hebrew Bible Svo, 2 2$ 

16 



2 


00 


I 


25 


I 


00 


3 


o<? 


4 


00 


I 


50 


2 


50 


I 


00 


3 


50 


3 


00 


7 


50 


4 


00 


I 


25 


2 


00 


2 


00 


I 


25 


I 


50 


I 


00 


I 


00 


2 


00 


I 


50 


3 


50 


5 


00 


I 


00 


3 


50 


I 


50 



my 24 1905 



